Community health center

Typical services covered are family practice and dental care, but some clinics have expanded greatly and can include internal medicine, pediatric, women's care, family planning, pharmacy, optometry, laboratory testing, and more.

In countries without universal healthcare, the clients include the uninsured, underinsured, low-income or those living in areas where little access to primary health care is available.

[citation needed] In Central and Eastern Europe, bigger health centers are commonly called policlinics (not to be confused with polyclinics).

The concept was designed by Johannes Leimena, the third Indonesian Minister of Health, and be realized by G. A. Siwabessy in New Order era.

The ULS are intended to increase the coordination between the primary and the secondary healthcare, through both of these services being provided by the same health unit.

Bertrand Dawson was commissioned by Christopher Addison to produce a report on "schemes requisite for the systematised provision of such forms of medical and allied services as should... be available for the inhabitants of a given area".

[13] It was suggested that these centers could arrange alternative medical care for patients "when their doctor is off duty, or for emergency calls when he is engaged elsewhere".

These clinics had some features in common with earlier proposals for health centers, but shared with them considerable resistance from GPs.

Community health centers have a unique mission of ensuring access for underserved, under-insured and uninsured patients.

Largely federally and locally funded, some health clinics are modernized with new equipment and electronic medical records.

In 2006, the National Association of Community Health Centers implemented a model for offering free, rapid HIV testing to all patients between the ages of 13 and 64 during routine primary medical and dental care visits.