Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Hamlin.
Ashley, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started working at Lone Star Family Health Center two years ago. I had been working in the oil and gas field for about six years and was truly unhappy. I felt that marketing the company I worked for wasn’t achieving anything. I had been looking for a job for about three years when I found Lone Star, and it was the perfect fit for me. I had no idea clinics and facilities like ours existed. Now, my days are spent strategizing how to communicate the message of how my organizations serves the community, how we help, and telling the stories of our doctors and nurses and front-line staff who work every day to make lives better. The truth is that I am not that inspiring, but I get to tell the story of a very inspiring organization full of truly wonderful people
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I don’t think the road is ever smooth for non-profits! There is always a fight to get the funding needed to help the community, to make sure you are serving the best way that you can. For example, Lone Star Family Health Center is a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC). This means that we receive federal funding to assure that people without healthcare get significant discounts at our clinic and can afford to receive healthcare. But federal funding comes with its pitfalls, and for the last four months we have had to operate on our reserve funds as congress continually pushed back a vote on the budget. Many FQHCs around the country were laying off staff and closing clinics. Thankfully, our CEO had money laid aside and we did not have to do that. But we were facing it on February 6th and were saved by an 11th hour vote. More than 30,000 patients rely on Lone Star Family Health Center clinics. We were desperately trying to lobby for funds while also deciding who and how we could continue serving, because without FQHCs people end up in the ERs. We have our funding now, but only for two years. Now the process starts again.
Please tell us about Lone Star Family Health Center.
Lone Star Family Health Center is a non-profit Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) with four clinics in Montgomery County. It is our job to assure that those living at or below the Federal Poverty Line have access to healthcare. We do this in a variety of ways- by offering multiple services such as family medicine, lab and x-ray, mental health, dental services and a discount pharmacy all in one location, by offering strongly discounted services for those with low income and no insurance coverage, by offering night and weekend hours for more convenience, and by being purposefully located in areas with high need. Personally, I think one of the greatest things we offer patients is the ability to establish a health home, a family doctor. Many non-profit clinics use volunteer doctors. Their service is amazing, but it doesn’t let a family establish a relationship with one doctor to care for them long term. We have a staff of more than 40 doctors and nurses who treat our patients full time. One of our nurses has worked for us for almost 25 years- she is now treating the children of people she treated when they were children themselves. That’s having a health home. And it leads to better overall health. Everyone deserves that, whether or not they have money or insurance.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
For Lone Star, I am not certain how to answer that. There are always things that could be different in such a big organization. But the truth it, we have buildings full of people who love taking care of our patients and I am not sure you can do better than that. There are bumps along the way, but that is normal.
For myself, I would have skipped my time out of public service. This is really where I belong!
Pricing:
- Discount services begin at $25. This covers most of what a patient would need done at a visit, not just seeing a doctor.
- Visits for Medicare patients are $0!
Contact Info:
- Address: 605 S. Conroe Medical Drive
Conroe, Texas 77304 - Website: lonestarfamily.org
- Phone: (936) 539-4004
- Email: info@lonestarfamily.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lonestarfamilyhealth
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LoneStarFamilyHealthCenter/
- Twitter: @LoneStarHealth
Image Credit:
Photos all courtesy of Lone Star Family Health Center
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