“Every person should have a medical home.”

So says Fred McLean, chair of the Sedgwick County Association for the Medically Underserved (SCAMU) and head of the Good Samaritan Clinic. “This way, if a minor condition occurs, they’ll feel comforted by a primary care physician who can inform them that it’s, in fact, a minor problem. Otherwise, they panic and go to the ER. And what should have been a $40 doctor visit, or even a simple phone call, needlessly balloons into a $500 charge.”

For years the clinics had to negotiate with doctors and hospitals to get treatment and diagnostic testing for their indigent patients. Each clinic had their short list of doctors who loved them. So when a clinic needed a specialty procedure, they would call on those colleagues and beg them to donate their services. Which the doctor did. (And it was all a handshake agreement.) But it took a doctor calling on another doctor to get this done. So one result of all this was that doctors weren’t seeing patients. Instead they were on the phone trying to get donated care for their indigent patients.

It was a hit-or-miss approach. And it was one that produced another negative effect on this small number of doctors: they began to feel like they were being taken for granted.

Enter Project Access. It recognized the caring medical community that always existed in Wichita and Sedgwick County. It didn’t create it. But it smoothed the process out — by coordinating it all. “It served to level the playing field,” said Mr. McLean, “so doctors didn’t feel like patsies.” What the doctors agreed to do in secret they could now do publicly without fear of being overwhelmed. Doctors who previously said no were now saying yes to a system that proposed a well-defined percentage of donated care, in which every doctor would get their fair share of referrals — specifically defined as no more than 20 specialty patients or 10 primary care patients. It was this specified number that helped bring a comfort level to the doctors. And why now 600 out of 850 Medical Society physician members have said yes to Project Access.

Furthermore, under Project Access, when participating physicians get a referral, they know that the patient’s income has been evaluated and that this is truly a person who’s experiencing difficult life circumstances. And because Project Access has done the detective work, the participating doctors can now fulfill their agreement assured that this is not a scam.

From the patient’s perspective, they previously would arrive at the doctor’s office and were asked if they had insurance. They would then have to announce that they were uninsured, which added humiliation to the process. But Project Access established protocols. Now there’s a Project Access ID Card that they present to providers. Now there’s a process that restores the patient’s dignity.

There’s also a tracking system in place that records how much care was given. And so a formerly informal handshake agreement is now turned into an official, codified system that has helped move people from crisis management into a coordinated system of comprehensive care. This is an absolute benefit, and now all six clinics — Good Samaritan, Guadalupe Clinic, the Center for Health & Wellness, United Methodist Health Clinic, Hunter Health Clinic, and the Sedgwick County Health Department — can claim to be a medical home for their patients.

As Mr. McLean insisted, “The more patients who have a medical home, the more we will reduce the inappropriate use of the ER and the more we will drive down the costs associated with those visits.”