"Community Health Assessments are now available by clicking on the "MAPP Report of Findings" tab above."

View Digital scrapbook of Health Summit 2006 Here

	Thomas Arnold's Power Point Presentation from the 2006 Health Summit "Here" This document is in PDF form.
	Catherine Pepper's Power Point Presentation from the 2006 Health Summit "Here" This document is in PDF form.

The Ledger Reported:

Friday, September 22, 2006

Miami Physician Praises Polk on Indigent Care

By Robin Williams Adams
The Ledger

 

Dr. Pedro Jose Greer Jr. speaks at the second annual "Partnerships for a Healthier Polk" conference Thursday at the Admiral's Inn near Cypress Gardens Adventure Park in Winter Haven. (PIERRE DuCHARME/The Ledger)

WINTER HAVEN -- Like any rushed, busy doctor, Dr. Pedro Jose Greer Jr. hadn't had time to eat before going to a medical clinic for the homeless he founded in Miami.

He walked into the waiting room carrying a sandwich bag, and almost immediately saw a young, homeless boy staring at it.

Greer offered him the sandwich. The boy took the sandwich, ate a bite and put the rest in his pocket.

"It's for my brothers," he said when Greer asked.

The boy's selflessness, saving food for his brothers when he was hungry himself, influenced Greer as much or more than the advanced degrees he earned, the University of Miami professor said Thursday.

"You guys are that 6-year-old child," he said at the annual Partnerships for a Healthier Polk conference at Best Western Admiral's Inn in Winter Haven.

Many of the attendees work with programs that help improve health care in Polk County.

"You're doing things that need to be done. . . . If we can get the rest of the country to be that 6-year-old child, this would be a true paradise."

Greer, the conference's keynote speaker, didn't talk like a big-city boy who knows all there is to know about health care.

Although more than 10,000 homeless people a year get help through the clinic, and he did health-system review under former presidents Clinton and Bush, he isn't interested in steering Polk residents to Miami or Washington, D.C., for advice.

Comparing how Polk County and Miami-Dade spend sales tax money on indigent care, he said Polk's approach is the one other Florida counties can learn from.

"You're motivated by the right mission," he said. "You're motivated by the right ethics." He praised the 120 people attending for working together to "make things better for the poor, uninsured and underinsured."

Recalling when he and others growing up in the 1960s and 1970s felt they could better the world, Greer, 50, reminded them:

"The experiment never stops. You're an integral part of it."

The way to keep their zeal alive, the Cuban-Irish gastroenterologist said, is to remember the people behind the numbers.

"It's not that you have 14,000," he said, referring to the enrollment the county-managed Polk Healthcare Plan for the uninsured hit this week.

"It's 14,000 individuals."

Uninsured county residents admitted to the plan receive care from local doctors who agree to accept its rates. The county's five hospitals also accept those rates.

He contrasted that with Dade County, where he said money from its indigent-care sales tax is earmarked for Jackson Memorial Hospital. That public hospital is a large provider -- but not the only one -- of care for the uninsured.

Involving the private sector, including chief executives of businesses, is important for the program's continued success, Greer said.

Along with the 6-year-old boy, other patients also stick in his mind as people who expanded his vision of health care and showed him the importance of nurses, social workers and case managers in providing it.

One was a woman, about 25, who was wearing a torn, soiled dress, crying and clutching her abdomen in pain when she arrived at the clinic for the homeless. She told Greer she had been raped the night before. He examined and treated her, asking why she hadn't gone to the rape treatment clinic at a nearby hospital.

"I couldn't take the comments people would make," she replied.

And there was the homeless man, one of many, whose feet were badly infected and decayed.

Greer treated him and provided medication for his feet, telling him to keep them dry and in socks at night.

"Doctor, have you seen the size of the rats in Miami?" the man asked. "I can't sleep with my shoes off."

Chief executives and policymakers don't see these patients and hear their needs, Greer said.

"We need to be the messengers," he said. "They need to know what's going on."

Itinerary for 2006 Conference historical reference Here.

Itinerary for 2005 Conference historical reference Here