Community health centers

A healthcare center, health center, or community health center is one of a network of clinics staffed by a group of general practitioners and nurses providing healthcare services to people in a certain area. Typical services covered are family practice and dental care, but some clinics have expanded greatly and can include internal medicine, pediatric, women’s care, family planning, pharmacy, optometry, lab, and more. In countries with universal healthcare, most people use the healthcare centers. In countries without universal healthcare, the clients include the uninsured, underinsured, low-income or those living in areas where little access to primary health care is available.

Community Health Centers (CHCs) have existed in Ontario for more than 40 years. Most CHC's consist of an interdisciplinary team of health care providers using electronic health records.

In Quebec, local community services centres known by their French acronym, CLSC, offer routine health and social services, including consultations with general practitioners with and without an appointment.

In China there are, as of 2011, 32,812 community health centers and 37,374 township health centers.

The health center (Portuguese: centro de saúde) was the basic community primary healthcare unit of the National Health Service of Portugal, as well as acting as the local public health authority. Usually, each health center covered the area of one of the Portuguese municipalities, but municipalities with over than 15 000 habitants could be covered by more than one of these centers. Health centers were staffed with general practitioners, public health physicians, nurses, social workers and administrative personnel.

...
Wikipedia