COVID Pandemic Impact on Community Health Centers and Low-Income Populations

This issue of the journal includes a significant number of contributions on the COVID pandemic, which alas and tragically continues to be with us. Halperin et al highlights the importance of community health centers (CHCs), a focus of this journal, in the fight against this pandemic. Many COVID patients who are hospitalized are high-risk patients. Conway et al next review the ingredients of successful case management programs for all high-risk patients. Askelson et al continues our commitment to CHCs with her article focused on communication between Medicaid enrollees and CHC staff. This article focused on a complex Medicaid waiver that involved personal engagement on the part of the enrollee. Makovkina and colleagues next delve into the decision-making process of health professional staff when they make referrals to out-of-network specialists. Fortney et al then present a new instrument measuring perceived access of care among patients with psychiatric disorders, a group of individuals who have particular challenges in accessing the health care system.

Navigation is just one of a number of ways to address coordination of care and in particular missed appointments. In Separate articles, Knight and LaForge in separate articles address new ways of focusing attention more efficiently on our patients and clients.

A column and several letters to the editor focus on the COVID pandemic including managerial lessons during this time (Hoffman), vaccine considerations (Coustasse), an update from the Yakima region of Washington (Crittenden), adaptation of primary care using telemedicine (Dowd-Green), and a focus on dermatological issues from Greece (Plachouri).

-Norbert I. Goldfield, MD

Editor