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Evolve Behavioral Health Services
Healthy Connections
My Kids Pediatric Clinic

CALL US: 888.710.8220

COVID-19 Testing Available in Arkansas

Healthy Connections can ensure surgical clinic and patient safety by providing COVID-19 testing at all of its Arkansas clinics.

This week, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced that outpatient elective surgeries can resume beginning on Monday, April 27. For patients to be eligible for these procedures, they must meet several requirements, including having a COVID-19 test within 48 hours of the procedure. This is being done to ensure the safety of both the patient and the clinic staff during the procedure.

Healthy Connections is doing this COVID-19 testing at its clinics in Little Rock, Hot Springs, Mena, Malvern, Arkadelphia, Mount Ida, and De Queen. Call (888) 710-8220 for appointments. Visit www.healthy-connections.org for more information, including COVID-19 updates, testing locations, and more. These tests can be done regardless of patient symptoms. Healthy Connections can also work with surgical providers to test their patients before the procedure.

The complete requirements that were announced included:

  • The procedure must be scheduled so the patient is not expected to spend the night in the hospital
  • The patient must not be sick and does not have a lot of underlying medical conditions.
  • The patient has had no contact with a COVID-19 patient within the previous 14 days.
  • The patient has no symptoms of COVID-19.
  • Patients must be tested for COVID-19 within 48 hours of the scheduled surgery.

Healthy Connections specialists, including Pittman Moore, MD (OB/GYN), Richard Bennett, DPM (podiatrist), and Vito Calandro, MD (cardiologist) will also resume some surgical procedures.

Healthy Connections dentists in Mena and Hot Springs are still open and doing “emergency” procedures. These procedures include most services that aren’t considered maintenance.

Nonprofit Healthy Connections strives to fill the healthcare access gaps in Arkansas. Since its founding in 1998 as a home-visiting program, Healthy Connections has provided much-needed health, dental, and social services to families from nearly every lifestyle. Healthy Connections accepts Medicaid, ArKids 1st, Medicare, and most private health insurance. There is also a sliding-fee scale for patients without health insurance, based on total family income.

Most health insurance covers COVID-19 testing at no cost to patients. Healthy Connections is waiving patient fees for COVID-19 testing for sliding-fee scale patients who qualify.

The Healthy Connections community health network offers primary care/family medicine, general dental services, and specialties including pediatrics, cardiology, podiatry, women’s health, and chiropractic. Evolve Behavioral Health and Medication Management, a division of Healthy Connections, provides mental health services.

Nonprofit Healthy Connections opened in 1998 as a home-visiting program. Primary Care health clinics now stretch from De Queen to Little Rock and help provide care where there are disparities in healthcare access. Healthy Connections also offers specialties, including Behavioral Health, Dentistry, Pediatrics, Podiatry, Cardiology, Chiropractic, and Women’s Health, depending on location.

 

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Save Our Clinics: Congress Must Aid Health Centers

Community Health Centers of Arkansas CEO LaShannon Spencer wrote a guest column this week in Arkansas Democrat-Gazette / ArkansasOnline.com . Community Health Centers, like Healthy Connections, Inc., are doing everything we can to fight COVID-19, but we must survive and thrive after this crisis. We’re appreciative of what Congress has provided thus far, but Community Health Centers need much more help from Washington, D.C.

Click the link below to read the column in its entirety. Click here to learn more about Healthy Connections.

Save our clinics

Congress must aid health centers

LASHANNON SPENCER
SPECIAL TO THE DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

When the novel coronavirus hit Arkansas, community health centers rose to the challenge, immediately shifting our business model. Unlike some private providers restricting who they see, we’re proud that we test residents for COVID-19 while taking special precautions to still meet the traditional health-care needs of our loyal patients.

“I have seen several families who were just so grateful that they were being seen. We have had families tell us that they were turned away elsewhere,” reports Dr. Rebekah Beyers, a pediatrician for Community Clinic in Springdale. “One mother told us she trusted that we would not tell her to come in unless we thought it was important and that we would help to keep them safe. Trust from our patients is one of the best things we could hope for.”

Many don’t realize the reach and value of community health centers in Arkansas. Without us, the state’s general health and the economy would suffer.

The 11 members of the Community Health Centers of Arkansas offer COVID-19 testing sites across the state at more than 60 of our clinics—from Siloam Springs to Eudora and from De Queen to Corning.

Without a dependable source from the state or federal governments for personal protective equipment (often referred to as PPE), we’ve scoured hardware stores and asked community partners to help ensure our staff and the public are adequately protected. We’ve kept our clinics open with special screenings in tents or drive-up evaluations to limit access.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE COLUMN

COVID-19 Update: What’s The Deal With Masks?

BY DR. CHRIS HOPKINSON
HEALTHY CONNECTIONS LITTLE ROCK FRANKLIN COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER

You likely have heard of the CDC’s recent guidance for everybody to wear a face mask when they must enter public spaces. If not, check it out here:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-cloth-face-coverings.html

The link also includes a handy guide to sewing your own mask.

It is important to understand the benefits of using a mask, but also the limitations of a mask in preventing transmission of COVID-19. We’ll explore these things here.

What kind of mask will work?

Cloth masks are perfectly sufficient for general use, as will be explored below. Access to medical masks, respirator type protective masks and other “official” or disposable masks will likely be hard to come by for the general public. They also offer limited (if any) additional benefit for reducing the risk of general community transmission.

What is important is that the mask covers your nose and mouth and that it fits comfortably without the need for constant readjustment and without falling off. And make sure it doesn’t impair your vision!

If you have access to needle and thread, you can make your own. Perhaps a family member could make some for you. Failing other solutions, a regular scarf or bandana that can be securely and comfortably wrapped about the nose and mouth can perform the same function.

What a mask will do:

To understand the benefits of using a mask, it is important to understand how the COVID causing virus is transmitted.

The primary ways that COVID-19 is transmitted are through direct contact with respiratory secretions (the stuff that sprays out of your nose and mouth if you cough or sneeze), or through contact with surfaces that have been contaminated by these secretions. Many surfaces may be implicated, but common ones include door handles, work surfaces, gas pumps, light switches etc. – any type of regularly touched surface. Clearly no-body is walking about licking these surfaces or rubbing their noses up against them! The way the virus is transmitted from these surfaces to your airways is via your hands (self-inoculation) after you touch them.

Enter the mask! Wearing a mask (such as described above) will:

  • Do an excellent job of preventing droplets from your own respiratory secretions reaching other people or surfaces that others might touch.
  • Help prevent self-inoculation through preventing you touching your face whilst you are out in public and surrounded by surfaces that could be contaminated.
  • Provide some limited benefit in the event you take a direct hit from somebody else’s sneeze/cough – it is impossible to say how much benefit, lots of factors from the material used to the fit will determine this. Pragmatically however, it is pretty clear that something is better than nothing.
  • Provide a visual cue to others – we are all in this together and the more we all strive to be safe, the greater our impact on reducing COVID transmission and infections.

What a mask will not do:

  • Replace the need to wash your hands!
    • You will only be protected from self-inoculation if the hands that eventually remove your mask are clean. Ideally, wash immediately before removing and again having handled the mask.
    • Wash often and wash well, limit the surfaces you touch to the minimum necessary and make use of available resources (sanitizing cloths for grocery carts, hand gel on entering and exiting businesses etc.)
  • Reduce the need to practice social distancing and relative isolation!
    • Do your best to limit journeys and social contacts outside of your immediate household. Restrict these occasions to clear necessities – food, work, medical appointments etc.
    • If you have to leave the house, in addition to masking up, make efforts to maintain 6 feet of personal space at all times
  • Protect you from prolonged close contact with somebody that is sick with COVID-19!
    • These masks are not likely to prevent transmission if you have prolonged close contact with the virus.
    • Avoid close (within 6 feet) or prolonged (more than a couple of minutes) contact with confirmed or suspected cases.
    • If you live with somebody who tests positive for COVID-19 the Arkansas Department of Health will offer you clear instructions for what to do next
  • Allow you to get out the house with impunity if you are sick!
    • If you have respiratory symptoms consistent with the COVID-19 virus please self-isolate!
    • Call your doctor’s office for advice and, if necessary, for assessment.
    • If you attend a clinic for medical assessment, please do wear a mask and anticipate being assessed in your vehicle or in a designated area away from the usual clinical areas.

How to look after a mask:

  • Ideally, make or acquire more than one
  • Wash between uses, certainly wash if it is becoming damp or appears soiled or if somebody sneezes on you
  • Be sure not to reverse the mask – have an outer and inner surface.
  • For cotton masks/scarves/coverings, a standard warm/hot washing machine cycle should effectively clean the mask

 Learn more about COVID-19 (Coronavirus) at our information page at www.healthy-connections.org/covid-19.

 

 

 

COVID-19 Testing For All

Healthy Connections clinics in Arkansas ARE OPEN and now testing for COVID-19 for all patients who want to be tested.

Patients with symptoms such as fever, dry cough, shortness of breath have previously been tested. We have now dropped all conditions for testing. If patients want to be tested, we can test at our Healthy Connections clinics.

To be tested, please call (888) 710-8220 and make an in-clinic appointment. You will be directed to your nearest Healthy Connection clinic to receive your test. Note that all persons will be screened for fever, cough, shortness of breath, or contact with a person who has been tested for COVID-19. The COVID-19 test will be done at a designated location including tents outside the building, a special area of the clinic, or even the patient’s vehicle. This will be done to help ensure the safety of our other patients and our staff during the Coronavirus outbreak.

Patients can also use Healthy Connections TeleHealth appointments for all primary care/family medicine issues. This can include pre-screening for flu, strep, or COVID-19 symptoms. Visit www.healthy-connections.org/telehealth to learn more.

Also remember to practice social distancing when arriving at our clinics.

Healthy Connections clinics are located in Little Rock, Hot Springs, Mena, Malvern, Arkadelphia, Mount Ida, and De Queen. Find a location near you at www.healthy-connections.org/locations.

Learn more about COVID-19 at www.healthy-connections.org/covid-19.

Testing locations

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Bahena, Hopkinson March Employees of Month

​Congratulations to our Healthy Connections March Employees of the Month.

  • WEST: Miriam Bahena
  • EAST: Dr. Chris Hopkinson

As Employees of the Month, they are entitled to either a $50 gift card or one day off. Throughout March, Miriam and Chris have exemplified our Healthy Connections three pillars of Excellence, Compassion, and Community.

Miriam is an LPN who works at the Healthy Connections clinic in Mena. During March, she was asked to go to Little Rock to assist with the Health For Life Clinic as it joined the Healthy Connections family. Dr. Hopkinson is the physician at the Healthy Connections Franklin Community Health Center in Little Rock. He has been heavily involved in preparing Healthy Connections and its employees for the COVID-19 outbreak.

Check out what Miriam’s co-workers had to say about her:

  • “Miriam at De Queen jumps right in and does whatever is asked of her at whichever clinic she goes to work. She has a great attitude and is a wonderful team player.”
  • “Miriam stepped in at Dr. Jefferson’s office and did amazing. She had no idea what she was getting into and she handled every situation and every patient like she’d been handling their care for years.”

And check out what Dr. Hopkinson’s co-workers had to say about her:

  • “He has stepped up as a leader and went above and beyond for Healthy Connections to prepare our clinics for the COVID-19 virus.”
  • “He has stepped up as a leader and has gone above and beyond with the preparation for the COVID 19 planning to keep us safe and informed.”
  • “Showing real patience as we make our slow start. Several patients commented they attended on the strength of her telephone manner or greeting when they stopped by to check the clinic out. “

Do you know who should be our next Healthy Connections Employees of the month? You can nominate them at www.healthy-connections.org/nominate.