The mission of Eau Claire Cooperative Health Centers is to provide high quality, comprehensive compassionate healthcare in the spirit of the Good Samaritan

Description:
Eau Claire Cooperative Health Center Inc. (The Cooperative) is the largest community based primary care provider for low-income, working poor residents in Richland, Lexington and Fairfield and Newberry Counties. The center currently provides a full range of comprehensive primary care, from obstetrics to geriatrics, including hospitalization and specialty referrals, discounted pharmacy, dentistry, and behavioral health and support services for all life cycles. The mission is to provide comprehensive, high quality, compassionate medical care in the spirit of the Good Samaritan.
The Cooperative integrates services with many area health care providers, hospitals, social service agencies, institutions of higher learning, and other community organizations. It is a founder member of four County Health Partnerships in Richland, Lexington and Fairfield and Newberry Counties. These consortiums of neighboring Community Health Centers (CHC’s), area hospital systems, SC Department of Health and Human Services (SCDHHS), SC Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC), SC Department of Social Services (SCDSS), representatives from all the school districts, area mental health facilities. Early childhood intervention programs and those interested in community health.
The Cooperative provides comprehensive primary health services at eleven freestanding facilities in urban Columbia, Richland County; urban West Columbia and Cayce, and rural Batesburg Leesville in Lexington County; and rural Ridgeway in Fairfield County and Newberry in Newberry County. It draws patients from an additional eight counties.
ECCHC will serve 38,000 unduplicated users, providing 116,000 medical and dental visits dispense 32,000 discounted pharmacy prescriptions and serve an additional 800 patients utilizing free pharmacy assistance programs.
The center will provide all these services utilizing an annual budget of $13 million, which includes a grant of $1.7 million. The center employs approximately 160 people including 32 full-time equivalent clinicians, two full-time pharmacists and a part-time dentist

History:
The Cooperative had its roots as a private pediatric practice serving low-income families in the 29203 zip code. Dr. Stuart Hamilton who founded this practice is the CEO of what we now know as Eau Claire Cooperative Health Centers Inc., which was incorporated in 1993. In 1995 the Cooperative received a great boost from gifts from Sterling Sharpe a former USC and Green Bay Packers football player and grants from the Duke Endowment and Palmetto Richland, Palmetto Baptist and Providence Hospitals, which resulted in two additional practice sites and fwo new divisions, obstetrics and gynecology and internal medicine. In 1997, Lexington Medical Center invited the Cooperative to bring pediatric services to Lexington County to help manage and track newborns leaving the hospital without a pediatrician. (Currently 3,000 babies are added to the practice annually) and out of that relationship four sites have developed in pediatrics, family practice and internal medicine and obstetrics and gynecology, reaching at risk communities in Cayce, West Columbia and Batesburg Leesville. In 2004, the Cooperative was invited to expand into rural Fairfield County and in 2007 into Newberry County.
From small beginnings in the Eau Claire community has developed a state of the art medical network serving 38,000 low-income, other wise underserved members of the greater Metro Columbia area

Contact people:

Dean Slade, Director Of Grants & Planning, (phone), (email) Stuart Hamilton MD, Chief Executive Officer, (phone), (email)

Address:

1228 Harden Street Columbia, SC 29204 (See a map)

Directions:

Ten blocks from the Statehouse on Gervais Street, turn left on to Harden Street. The offices are located on the corner of Harden and Lady Streets