All Care Health Centeris a non-profit urban Community Health Center and has provided full service primary health care in Council Bluffs since August 1998. The center was started by a group of community leaders and volunteers who realized the significant primary health care needs of low to moderate-income residents of our community. Our mission statement reads: ”To provide primary and preventive health care, community outreach and patient education to each individual patient with compassion and respect.”

Community Health Centers are part of the nation’s health care “safety net” for the low income and uninsured. Federal grant support helps to underwrite the cost of care for this population. Through the federal government the center also has access to extremely low cost medication for our patients, and we work to get them on other programs for which they might be eligible, such as Medicaid and HAWK-I.

We provide basic primary care medical services. This includes physician care, lab, x-ray and other testing. Inpatient and specialty care is arranged, as needed. Also, we have access to lower cost medications for eligible patients. Eligibility for low cost services is determined by documentation of financial status using Federal Poverty Guidelines. Ninety-two percent of our patients live below 200% of poverty. Fifty-five percent of our patients are eligible for the sliding fee scale, meaning they are both below 200% of poverty and uninsured. Eighty-three percent of our patients come from Pottawattamie County in Iowa, six percent from Douglas County in Nebraska, and the rest from surrounding counties.

We are serving a growing immigrant population, primarily Hispanic, but also others. This population is of increasing importance to the economic viability of our community. In 2004, 17% of our patients were non-Caucasian, in a county that is only 7% minority.