SET Family Medical Clinics
SET Family Medical Clinics is serving the uninsured, underinsured, and low-income people in the Pikes Peak Region since 1990. SET Family Medical Clinics is a faith based 501(c)(3) organization.
At SET Family Medical Clinics we celebrate the value of each person’s life and consider it a worthy cause to lift the burdens of others by lovingly offering care to people regardless of who they are, what they believe or where they come from. We seek to combine finely honed medical skills with compassionate touch to care for the whole person—body, mind and spirit. Founded in 1990 by the Sisters of Charity, SET Family Medical Clinics were originally intended to be a satellite office affiliated with Health SET-Denver, as it was attempting to extend its services for the senior citizen population in Colorado Springs. Later, SET Family Medical Clinics became a 501(c)(3) non-profit with its own Board of Directors. SET targets the uninsured and underinsured, homeless, and vulnerable populations who lack health and wellness services due to income or service access by providing basic medical care and holistic health services to these individuals through a network of community resources and volunteer health providers.
Current Programs:
¨ SET Family Medical Clinic at St. Francis- serves low income and uninsured families and children. We seek to combine finely honed medical skills with compassionate touch to care for the whole person—body, mind and spirit.
¨ SET Homeless Medical Clinic with 5 medical clinics per week (Monday through Friday), this is currently one of the largest programs SET offers, as the medical needs of the homeless population are great.
¨ Senior Wellbeing Medical Clinics and Holistic Wellness Services – Health and human services for the aging at ten Well Being Clinic sites. This program is designed to keep older adults independent while ensuring quality of life. The Holistic approach involves the physical, emotional/ psychological, and spiritual care of each participant. Seniors are offered monthly wellness check-ups as well as education, referrals and follow-up visits as necessary. They also participate in Gathering Days for the emotional/psychological support they may need. In addition, spiritual companioning one-on-one with volunteers rounds out the Holistic approach to this well being program.
If you would like more information about SET, please visit our website at
http://www.setofcs.org/ or call us at 776-8850.
Lack of health insurance has long term consequences for children, young families, and young adults. Children of uninsured and underinsured families are at a higher risk for developmental delays than those who have insurance. In El Paso County 100,000 people are uninsured. Among these individuals are seniors, middle income wage earners with families, immigrants, and children. The primary cause of this medical crisis is cost. Health insurance premiums increase approximately 14 percent per year making health care more of a privilege than a right. According to the Colorado Coalition of the Medically Underserved, most families without health insurance have at least one family member who is a full-time or a part-time worker. The typical cost of family insurance is $8,500 per year or nearly 19 percent of a family’s budget. Studies have shown:
· The uninsured use more expensive treatment for preventive, acute and chronic care because they often obtain medical care in the emergency department.
· Uninsured children are at least 70% more likely than insured children not to have received medical care for common conditions like ear infections--illnesses that if left untreated can lead to more serious health problems. They are also 30% less likely to receive medical attention when they are injured.
· The uninsured are four times as likely as insured patients to require both hospitalizations and emergency hospital care for conditions that could be avoided, like pneumonia and uncontrolled diabetes.
· Both uninsured adults and children are less likely to receive preventive care.
Health care is provided in a piecemeal, ineffective and reactive fashion. At best, preventative medicine is limited; health is managed crisis by crisis. Lack of health insurance has important health and financial consequences for both the individual and the community. Inability to obtain necessary care endangers the lives of all patients, adding costs to the health care system and reducing productivity. Young adults, 18 to 24 years old, frequently lack health insurance for years putting them at risk for future health problems.
Emergency rooms in Colorado Springs are being overwhelmed by non-emergency applications and thus placing a tremendous strain on our health care system. The market place is overwhelmed by product marketing messages that are effecting how people think they should look and feel, while the health care industry falls behind in actual educational training programs and delivery systems. Locally, there has been a shift in clients to that of serving new immigrants from Mexico, and poor Hispanics, Blacks, and elderly. This new culture shift is overwhelming our emergency rooms with non-emergencies, language barriers, and other cultural differences. Penrose- St. Frances Hospital’s policy to accept all that are sick is causing its emergency rooms to be over used while, for lack of communication, SET of Colorado Springs is being under used. This new culture change has hampered the dissemination of information that would direct those in need to Colorado Springs SET. To help resolve this dilemma, SET must become creative and seek innovative ways to communicate our product to the community while at the same time impacting the need for new models in educational opportunities for the health care arena and a more modern and sophisticated delivery system.
