A new clinic in southeast Dallas County could address a significant gap in health care access.
Dallas County’s medical safety net provider, Parkland Health, said it plans to build a new clinic in the Inland Port area – one of the fastest-growing parts of the county. The clinic will offer primary care, pediatric care and pharmacy services for thousands of patients in the area.
“It's a health care desert,” said Edmundo Castañeda, Parkland Health vice president and chief operating officer. “There is a scarcity of medical providers in that area.”
In a recent community health needs assessment, Parkland identified the Inland Port area as one of the more vulnerable areas in Dallas County when it comes to health and well-being, Castañeda said.
Parkland Health announced the 10,000-square-foot space will go into a mixed-use development in Wilmer but will serve surrounding cities like Lancaster and Hutchins.
“If you look at life expectancy in the area, specifically in the city of Wilmer, life expectancy is 73 years of age,” Castañeda said. “When you look at the Dallas area and the zip code that has the highest life expectancy, it's 86 years of age. That's a tremendous gap that is predicated upon where somebody lives.”
Wilmer Mayor Sheila Petta said she and local developers have been working on the area for years, but she said Parkland’s new clinic is “godsent.”
“We have nothing out here,” she said. “The people that live in this area…we’re not rich people. Everyone I know lives from paycheck to paycheck.”
A lot of people in the Inland Port area rely on Parkland, according to Petta.
Because of the lack of access in the area, Castañeda said Parkland Health sees a significant volume of emergency department patients from the area – about 30% are for “lower severity conditions.”
“Which can lead one to conclude that primary care services in that area would serve the population well,” Castañeda said. “What's happened historically is that underserved populations tend to not manage chronic conditions…. The whole point of primary care is to try to prevent disease as much as possible, to promote wellbeing, to ensure that we're doing this in a customer-centric way that is close to patients and where they live.”
Mike Rader, the developer of the site where the clinic will be, said Inland Port’s residential development hasn’t kept up with the community’s growing needs.
“We were the fastest growing industrial area in the United States for five years,” he said. “Basically, all the industrial land is developed and gone…. We got to a point that Parkland recognized in their evaluations and studies that it is a desert for medical facilities and there is enough support here for them to come and put a facility in.”
Castañeda said there’s limited housing and resources in the area, but the population in the area is expected to increase. In addition, the Medicaid and uninsured populations are expected to grow faster than the overall population in the area.
Social determinants of health, or “non-medical drivers of health,” are also a significant concern – like access to transportation and economic stability. Castañeda said there’s a lot of economic vulnerability in the area – with low employment rates contributing to high poverty rates.
“That's why we exist,” Castañeda said. “Because we believe that there are inequities in health care in our community and throughout the entire country. We’re here to take care of those that are poor and disenfranchised that don't have basic access to health care.”
When the clinic opens in 2028, it will be Parkland's 18th community health center. It will be smaller than a typical Parkland clinic, but Castañeda said the organization will have the opportunity to build in the future as demand grows.
Petta said the clinic isn’t going to solve all the access issues Wilmer and surrounding cities have, but she’s hopeful for what the new clinic will mean for the city.
“There's a lot of things that Wilmer will still need,” she said. “I'm hoping that others will follow. Because they will be welcomed and they will be appreciated…. We are growing and we’re only using about nine miles of our little city. We still have 22 [miles] that is not developed at this time, so we have room for growth.”
Abigail Ruhman is KERA’s health reporter. Got a tip? Email Abigail at aruhman@kera.org.
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