Byline: Leslie A. Young Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
It's Tuesday morning and Barbara Majalca of Aurora wakes up to a 7-year-old with a sore throat. Within minutes she realizes her toddler and preschooler are vomiting.
Three of her four children need medical attention, and she doesn't have health insurance.
Acting on her neighbor's advice, she heads to the mobile health clinic operated by Rocky Mountain Youth and Columbia Medical Center of Aurora. She emerges an hour later with peace of mind, three boys on the mend and a bill for $15.
Without this program, Majalca says, she would have taken her boys to the emergency room: ``I'd be up to my elbows in bills, making payments.''
A year ago Majalca had health insurance through her job. She quit when her sister-in-law moved and couldn't baby-sit anymore. Instead of finding a new job and spending her paycheck on day care, she decided to stay home and spend time with her children. Her husband's health insurance plan requires a monthly premium of $260 for a family of six.
``We really couldn't afford for that extra money to be taken out,'' she says.
The plight of families such as the Majalcas is all too common in Colorado. An estimated 181,000 Colorado children are uninsured, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
If pediatrician Larry Wolk had his way, his staff would treat each of those children. Wolk, 36, is founder of the nonprofit medical umbrella group Rocky Mountain Youth. Now in its third year, the program has served more than 35,000 patients; it's one of four in the United States to be honored by the American Hospital Association for providing free youth health care.
Doctors and nurse practitioners from Rocky Mountain Youth staff clinics in Denver, Commerce City, Aurora and Arvada. They operate a health van that visits five Aurora elementary schools Monday through Friday. They also have an outreach clinic at Urban Peaks, a teen shelter. Their Kids Care Van travels throughout the Front Range - it was at more than 50 sites last year - offering health education to schoolchildren on topics as diverse as safe sex and smoking. Planning for a mobile dental clinic is under way.
Wolk is the kind of pediatrician who wears kooky ties and a Green Bay Packers watch to work. He's the kind of professional who has a social worker on staff to help meet families' needs on a broader scale. He's the kind of person who inspires a corps of young, idealistic health professionals to join him on his mission. And he's the kind of doctor who drives his business manager crazy because he doesn't care how services will be paid for - he only cares that children get the medical attention they need.
The reasons children are uninsured are numerous. Some parents don't want to do the monthly paperwork required to maintain their Medicare coverage. Some make too little or too much money to qualify for the Colorado Child Health Plan. Some just don't see health insurance as a priority.
One of Wolk's patients is a little boy with rheumatic heart disease whose mother refuses to pay her bills or file for government assistance. ``Should we deny him because of his mother's circumstance?'' Wolk says.
``Traditional health-care providers are annoyed yet encouraged by what we're doing. They don't understand how we can afford to do this. If you really know in your heart that what you're doing is right, you're going to get paid for it, one way or another.''
Health professionals who work with Rocky Mountain Youth are also employed by other health-care agencies.
Wolk's private pediatrics clinic serves insured families and helps support the nonprofit arm. If all else fails and the need is great, Rocky Mountain Youth doctors write off their costs, as do many cooperating specialists.
After working with Wolk for three years, Dr. Gini Taylor has no qualms about calling an outside specialist and asking for assistance. During the week she visits at least 10 metro sites, including clinics and hospitals.
``It's so rewarding to do this job,'' she says. ``Every single day you finish your job and you know you made a difference.''
Taylor regularly visits the Commerce City clinic that serves ``the working poor,'' she says. ``These kids are in one of their two changes of clothes.''
Last November, Wolk was appointed medical director of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Colorado and cut back his clinic visits.
``He thought he could do more for the kids from the top than in the trenches,'' Taylor says.
One of the people who see Taylor and her co-workers in action is Lenora Walker, a nurse at the Medical Center of Aurora South Campus. Rocky Mountain Youth doctors see 40 to 50 babies a month in the nurseries she manages.
Walker says she's seen Taylor and Dr. Joe Craig follow cases after babies have gone home from the hospital, working to get families set up with primary-care doctors.
``Their level of caring is just so deep,'' Walker says. ``You stop and look at them and you think, `These people must be out of their minds.'
``They're definitely not in it for the money. They're in it to provide care. Plenty of hospital employees use that group (Wolk's private practice) for their own pediatrician, and that speaks volumes.''
In a corner of the Rocky Mountain Youth offices, piles of kids' clothing await new owners. A storage closet downstairs is a treasure chest of giveaways that include nonperishable food items, diapers and baby skin-care products. Social worker Mary Zold coordinates the supply bank. Although it's 85 degrees outside, she's already working to meet families' needs for food and toys around the holidays.
Zold handles a flurry of family crises, some as difficult as helping fill out paperwork for shelter housing, some as simple as lending an ear to an overloaded parent. She emphasizes to them: ``You're not just coming in for medical care. If there are things going on at home other than your kids' being sick, we can help.''
Additional Rocky Mountain Youth resources come from corporate sponsors such as Continental Homes, HealthOne, Presbyterian / St. Luke's Hospital and groups such as the Shannon Foundation, Wolk says.
``We make a commitment not to go after public dollars,'' he says, particularly because Colorado's economy is so strong.
Seeking funding is a necessity that Wolk finds annoying.
``We have to expend energy to get funding,'' he says. ``It would be nice if people just realize this is helping.''
CAPTION(S):
Color Photo
Dr. Larry Wolk examines Nicholas Engen, 3, at a Rocky Mountain Youth clinic. Wolk founded the nonprofit group. By George Kochaniec / Rocky Mountain News.
CAPTION: Barbara Majalca and her children wait for the opening of the health van at Clyde Miller Elementary School, in Aurora. The mobile clinic is operated by Rocky Mountain Youth and Columbia Medical Center of Aurora. By Steve Groer / Rocky Mountain News.
