Family and Medical Counseling Services
Location
Family and Medical Counseling Service
2041 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE
Washington, District Of Columbia 20020
Family and Medical Counseling Service - Seat Pleasant
Overview
Family and Medical Counseling Service (FMCS) is a non-profit community-based human service and health care center that was founded in 1976. FMCS is physically located in Ward 8, east of the Anacostia River, where it has been providing services to meet critical health care and social service needs of hard-to-reach populations in the District for over 3 decades.
The mission of FMCS is to employ community-based, culturally competent approaches to provide comprehensive services that promote the emotional and physical health of families and individuals, regardless of income or social status, and maximize their quality of life.
Goals
1) Provide culturally-competent, compassionate, quality care and support services to clients in the community in which they live;
2) Be responsive to that community's changing needs; and
3) Link resources with other agencies in a network of services that provides the people served with the maximum benefit in the most cost-effective manner.
Throughout our history, we have placed a high priority on providing culturally competent and relevant services to racial and ethnic minorities. Our history of providing services to African American communities has heightened and reinforced our ability to interact with and treat our clients in culturally sensitive, responsive, appropriate and relevant ways. In the late 1980s, in response to the disproportionate impact of the HIV epidemic in the communities we serve, FMCS developed a special focus on HIV disease.
Although FMCS clients come from all parts of the District, our focus is on communities east of the Anacostia River, and most of our clients live in this area. FMCS clients include heterosexual, gay, bisexual, and transgendered men and women. Our client population is almost entirely African American and contains a significant number of persons with special needs, including injection drug users and other substance users, ex-offenders, and homeless persons.
Initiatives
FMCS provides a full range of health and HIV/AIDS-specific services to residents in the Washington DC area. Our services include: primary medical care, mental health services, case management, community outreach, outpatient substance abuse education and treatment, traffic alcohol education and counseling, and support services. FMCS has certification for Medicaid, Medicare, and the D.C. Alliance, certification to provide Level I and Level II substance use treatment and contracts with the District's MCOs to provide primary care and mental health services.
FMCS offers a continuum of care for PLWHAs and people whose behaviors place them at high risk for HIV infection, including: comprehensive core medical services mentioned above, food bank services, medical nutrition therapy, HIV counseling and testing, evidence-based HIV prevention interventions, gender-specific support groups, and needle exchange services for injection drug users (IDUs). These services are supported by Ryan White funding from DC Department of Health/HAHSTA and HRSA/HAB. HAHSTA also provides support for HIV prevention programs, including a Needle Exchange/Harm Reduction Program, Patient Navigation, and HIV counseling and testing and linkage to care at a branch of Department of Motor Vehicles and two Economic Security Centers.
Through a partnership with AIDS United and Washington AIDS Partnership, a community health worker links newly diagnosed and HIV-positive persons out of care to core primary care and support services. MAC AIDS Fund supports wound care on the mobile van. CDC provides support for HCV screening for IDUs, which co-locates with Needle Exchange. FMCS was recently awarded a contract from the Department of Behavioral Health to provide HIV positive and high-risk persons with substance use, mental health, and/or co-occurring disorders with comprehensive health and social services. This program is under the SAMHSA-funded 12 Cities project awarded to the District.
FMCS received designation as a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in June, 2012. We also received a Kaiser Foundation grant to seek Patient-Centered Medical Home certification. We received Level 2 PCMH certification in April, 2014.