Detroit’s Taylor Street Primary Care Builds Trust in Community with Disability Accessible Care
Lindsay Knake
| 4 min read
Lindsay Knake is a brand journalist for Blue Cross B...
Key Takeaways
- Taylor Street Primary Care in Detroit’s Virginia Park neighborhood offers culturally congruent, community‑focused primary care to under‑insured and uninsured residents, emphasizing trust‑building through staff who share patients’ ethnic backgrounds and life experiences.
- A recent grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and the University of Michigan Center for Disability Health and Wellness funded an adjustable‑height exam table and wheelchair‑accessible scale, enabling the clinic to serve patients with disabilities and improve care for seniors.
- Staff members treat patients like family, providing personalized support, disability‑care training and ADA‑compliant services to address mistrust and improve health outcomes in the community.
Taylor Street Primary Care is a place where everybody knows your name, says Melanie Woods, chief nursing officer.
Taylor Street is a hidden gem in the middle of the Virginia Park neighborhood offering primary care services to underinsured or uninsured residents. With the welcoming, community-feel of Taylor Street, nurse practitioner Idya Mitchell and her colleagues hope to build patient trust, improve quality of life and prevent and reduce chronic illnesses.
Healthcare in which providers share the same ethnicity and similar life experiences as the patient, called culturally congruent care, can improve communication and trust. Having a trusting relationship with a healthcare provider is a key part of improving health outcomes, and that’s exactly what Taylor Street Primary Care aims to do.
The staff of four provides preventive care services including annual physicals, vaccines, acute care for illnesses, school and sports physicals for adolescents, behavioral healthcare and wellness education, and the clinic also has a laboratory to provide basic services such as A1C, flu and covid tests and urinalysis.
“When I think of nursing, I always think of nurturing,” Woods said. “When you come to Taylor Street, a lot of times we want to know, how's your mother? How are you taking care of your children? How are you handling your job? What things are affecting you so that we can help or get to the bottom of what's really affecting your blood pressure?”
“A lot of our patients are not used to seeing providers that look like them. And so, Taylor Street being in the community provides that. It provides a sense of security. A lot of our patients feel like they're home,” she said.
When a patient arrives at Taylor Street Primary Care Clinic, they see Valencia “Val” Sanders, a front desk coordinator who treats everyone as though they are a relative. That means helping them to their cars and spending time with them to ensure the patients have what they need.
If Sanders is out of the office, Woods said, many patients choose to call back when Sanders can help them.
Disability care improves health
About 2% of the Taylor Street Primary Care patients have disabilities, and the facility wasn't set up to adequately treat those patients. That's why staff applied for a grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and the University of Michigan Center for Disability Health and Wellness, which allowed them to purchase an adjustable-height examination table and a wheelchair-accessible scale to make the facility more accessible for patients with disabilities.
The equipment was installed in the spring, allowing patients with mobility challenges to get onto the table. The adjustable bed is also helpful for senior patients, who feel more stable on a lower bed when their feet can touch the ground, said Wendy Harper, medical assistant, who gets the patients prepared for their visits.
The scale allows the staff to weigh the wheelchair separately to get an accurate weight of the patients. In one example, they found a patient weighed a lot less than they realized, and the staff were able to help the patient with their dietary needs to gain weight, Woods said.
“We're very proud to tell our patients ‘We got this just for you. We have you in mind when we are receiving grants to be able to purchase equipment.’”
The grant also allowed Taylor Street Primary Care to provide training on disability care for the staff and do an audit of the facility, website and intake process to ensure everything is Americans with Disabilities Act accessible. The clinic redid the website to make it accessible.
“In a community where mistrust and distrust lives, we are building our credibility. We are here. We are investing in this community so that we are able to be better servants or better providers to those that live amongst us,” Woods said.
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