Missouri State University’s Care Clinic is now accepting patients on Medicaid, according to a press release.
Mercy Hospital Springfield and Missouri State University opened the MSU Care Clinic in 2015 inside the O’Reilly Clinical Health Sciences Center. It provides free health services and medication to underserved and uninsured patients.
Following Missouri’s Medicaid expansion , a “large number of patients” who previously received care were no longer able to receive the MSU Care Clinic’s services, according to Justin Gassel, clinic manager.
In the past, patients had to be between 18 and 64 years old, have no health insurance, be ineligible for Medicaid and have a household income equal to or less than 200% of the federal poverty line in order to receive care. Now, the clinic has eliminated the Medicaid ineligibility requirement.
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“We serve a very targeted patient population,” Gassel said in a press release. “The Medicaid expansion was immensely helpful to patients across the state, but it meant that most of the patients we had built relationships with and who trusted us with their care could no longer continue seeing us. This will restore our ability to care for some of our community’s most underserved patients for whom there are limited options for care.”