Number Of Uninsured Increasing At Multnomah County

More than 62,300 people received health care services from Multnomah county last year, an increase of 3.2 percent from 2005.

Forty-five percent of clients had no health insurance, compared with 41 percent in FY 2005. One-half of all clients were children ages 18 and under.

Lillian Shirley, Multnomah County Health Department Director states, " As part of it's public health function, the health department continues the difficult task of assuring access to care for as many people as it can within its clinical capacity. Providing the highest quality service and maximum access to healthcare while facing increasingly limited resources remains a community-wide challenge.

Multnomah County Health Department provides communicable disease prevention and monitoring, food service inspections, immunizations, maternal and child health care, environmental health, adolescent health services, tobacco prevention, and chronic disease prevention in addition to providing medical and dental care to uninsured and Medicaid-insured patients .