Health Care Gets Good Marks, Except Cost More Than Half Of Kootenai County Residents Surveyed Cite Price As Burden

Kootenai County residents are generally happy with the health care available here, but many say they have problems paying for it, according to a new survey.

More than half of those surveyed called medical costs a problem, and a quarter said they had no health insurance.

The survey, which polled 500 county residents by telephone in July, was commissioned by Community Health Linkages, a 20-member committee representing area health and social service organizations. It asked questions about the quality and availability of health care, sources of health information, and personal health status and needs.

“It will help us get a focus on the areas that are not being met,” said committee member Sandy Mamola, director of the Dirnee Community Health Clinic, formerly Lake City Health Care Clinic, in Coeur d’Alene.

A U.S. Census Bureau report released Monday said 17.7 percent of Idaho residents are uninsured, about eight percentage points lower than the Community Health Linkages findings for Kootenai County.

“There’s a great need in the community for insurance,” said Jim Faucher, committee chairman and vice president of community development for Kootenai Medical Center.

Among the study’s findings:

Sixty-five percent of county residents rated the area’s health care about average or slightly above average compared with other places with similar population. Another 11 percent rated care well above average.

Thirty-five percent said the ability to get health insurance has been a problem.

To improve health care in Kootenai County, 21 percent said care should be more affordable, 13 percent said insurance should be more affordable, and 8 percent said there should be more specialists and professionals in the county.

Seventy-five percent of residents said they currently had health insurance; 29 percent said there were periods in the past two years when they were uninsured.

The survey also questioned people about how they learn about health issues. Eighty percent said they had not attended a seminar, meeting or lecture on health concerns in the past three years. Almost half said health care professionals are the best source of health information, preferred over books, magazines, TV or the Internet.

“One of the things that surprised me is that many people are uninformed about what’s available,” said Karen Cotton, a committee member and community outreach coordinator for KMC. “It also surprised me that most people get their information from their own health care provider. Providers need to make sure they’re educating their patients every time they see them.”

The Dirnee Community Health Clinic is open to people without health insurance on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and on Wednesday mornings by appointment. About 75 people attend the free clinic every week, Mamola said.

Mamola said she was surprised that just 8 percent of those surveyed reported having problems getting prescriptions filled.

“That’s one of the greatest problems we have,” she said. “Somebody making a barely livable existence, just to get their hypertensives or their ulcer medication or their diabetic testing supplies, silly little things like that, can throw their budgets out of whack.”

Community Health Linkages members will review the survey results in coming weeks and will present the findings to community groups, Faucher said. The committee will determine the three items of most concern in the survey and will begin work on addressing them, he said.

Faucher hopes to conduct another survey in a year or two and compare the results.

The survey was conducted by Strategic Research Associates in Spokane and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percent.