St. Paul’s Children’s Services to join Bethesda Health Clinic system

TYLER, Texas (KLTV) - The Bethesda Health Clinic celebrated its 20th birthday Friday morning by announcing that St. Paul’s Children’s Services would be joining their system as Bethesda Pediatrics.

Danny Price, the Pediatric Medical Director at Bethesda Pediatrics, said that many patients have utilized St. Paul until they are 21 and gone on to Bethesda. He said today’s announcement is a long time coming.

“As [Bethesda] were forming their ideas and looking for the need they saw, ‘Well, kids are being taken care of at St. Paul’s, so let’s not reinvent the wheel, let’s just take care of adults,’” said Price. “So it’s amazing 20 years later even though Bethesda had that initial desire.”

The Bethesda CEO said that patients can look forward to a streamlining of resources.

“You know when you have separate clinics it’s particularly the combining of resources that’s gonna be the big part,” said Dr. John English, CEO of Bethesda Clinic. ”And then we can kind of collaborate on some efforts where one clinic may have to hire say a nutritionist or a social worker now you can have one that can work between the two clinics and really maximize our effort.”

English said the move was made as they’re seeing an increased demand for low-cost healthcare.

“As we get more and more patients and more and more need, those who are uninsured, those in the pediatric realm and on Medicaid, different types of insurance that are hard to find, and of course for adults who are uninsured we continue seeing as we have been doing,” said English.

Bethesda is a completely community-funded organization. It accepts no state or federal funding. They have helped over 20,000 patients in their 20 years.

Copyright 2023 KLTV. All rights reserved.