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Low-income and uninsured Prince George’s County residents seeking medical treatment soon will have a new health care option.

Mary’s Center, a Washington, D.C.-based federally qualified health care center, is opening a new clinic in Adelphi and widening the use of its new mobile health unit, called the Mama & Baby Bus, which will travel to Prince George’s County elementary schools to assist residents. The bus is complete with a three-person medical staff, a patient bathroom, two patient rooms, various vaccinations, electronic medical records and diagnostic tools.

The center held a groundbreaking ceremony Oct. 26 at the Judy Hoyer Family Learning Center on Riggs Road in Adelphi, after a kickoff ceremony that morning at Cesar Chavez Elementary School. Chavez is the first school Mary’s Center partnered with for regular visits by the health mobile.

Erinn Austin, the school nurse at Chavez, said the school’s PTA president met Mary’s Center representatives at a recent county school board meeting and brought them to the school to solidify the partnership.

The health mobile van, which the center purchased in August, offers a variety of services, such as illness diagnoses, pregnancy testing, sexually transmitted disease testing, flu shots and various treatments for low-income or uninsured residents. The van will come to Chavez at 6609 Riggs Road in Hyattsville from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Wednesdays. Other school sites and times have not been selected.

David Tatro, Mary Center’s chief operations officer, said mobile health care centers have become a national trend that makes health services more accessible to those without transportation or who are noncompliant.

Austin said she will be tasked with scheduling appointments for bus visits to the school.

“We thought it was a great initiative because we know there is such a need for health care in our community,” she said.

According to the state’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Prince George's County accounted for nearly one-quarter of the state's infant deaths in 2007. In addition, more than 150,000 people are uninsured in Prince George’s County, according to a 2005 U.S. Census Bureau report.

The Mary’s Center expansion was made possible primarily through CareFirst, an independent health care company of the BlueCross BlueShield Association, which granted $1.5 million toward building costs for the new location and operation costs for the clinic’s first year. After its first year, the new clinic will pay for itself through payments received from insured patients or from Medicaid, Medicare or federal grant dollars to offset the losses from providing service to uninsured patients, Tatro said.

As a federally qualified center, it accepts all patients regardless of income or insurance. Uninsured patients pay the center based on a sliding fee scale that follows Maryland’s income level guidelines. For example, a single resident making less than $11,000 per year would be considered “level 1” and would not have to pay a service fee, while a “level 2” — someone who makes between $11,000 and $13,000 per year — would have to pay 20 percent of the fee. Tatro said the average cost for uninsured patients the center serves is $50.

Prince George’s County Public Schools, which operates the learning center, has given Mary’s Center 4,500 square feet of space in the building and a 20-year agreement that does not require Mary’s Center to pay occupancy or leasing fees, said Tatro. The space in the Judy Center had been previously vacant. Mary’s Center planned to begin renovations for the new center Nov. 1. It expects the Adelphi clinic to open in February.

Tatro said Mary’s Center’s three clinics — two in Washington, D.C., and one clinic in Silver Spring — offer medical services in addition to dental, psychological, educational and social services.

The learning center already houses educational, psychological and social service organizations. Mary’s Center will partner with those other organizations so it will not have to expand its secondary services and instead will direct patients to the other groups within the Judy Center, Tatro said.

“In order to be a patient center medical home, we must be set up to address the needs of specific diagnoses. This will attach people to specific care facilities and better manage care of diagnoses,” he said.

Eileen Kaplan, the learning center’s former program manager who retired in July, said she and Marty Worshtil, the executive director of the Prince George’s Child Resource Center, which operates out of the learning center, spoke to Mary’s Center two years ago to encourage it to create a new clinic at the Adelphi site.

“Mary’s Center has that ability of being a federally funded health clinic that we desperately, desperately need,” she said.

Having a Mary’s Center location in Adelphi will “put the icing on the cake” in terms of providing a gamut of services to patients and families seeking low-cost, accessible health care, Kaplan said.

The primary reason for expanding to Prince George’s County was to better serve the residents, Tatro said. Of the patients visiting the Montgomery County clinic, 70 percent are from Prince George’s, he said, noting the benefit of the learning center location being so close to the Montgomery County border.

With the new clinic, the center projects seeing more than 6,000 patients in 2012, representing 12 percent of the low-income population in the area, Tatro said. The use of the health mobile in Prince George’s provides significant benefits, he added.

“I’m thrilled that it’s going to actually happen,” Kaplan said. “I wanted to complete the Judy Center’s dream of making it a one-stop shop ... where all the resources families need would be in one place.”

djgross@gazette.net