The Health Center's primary service area includes over 600,000 people who live in south St. Louis City and County and several mid-county municipalities. Its patient mix is diverse but stable, reflecting an amalgam of the upper, middle and lower income communities within a several mile radius. Admissions include a broad range of acute, subacute and chronic disease processes, selectively triaged to provide a mix representative of general Internal Medicine practice including such subspecialty areas as cardiology, oncology, and HIV medicine. Because of the diversity of illnesses managed, and the range and depth of clinical interests among the attending staff, the housestaff gain extensive experience with a broad range of internal medicine problems, both primary and tertiary in nature. To maintain this broad experience and to prevent any one very busy service from skewing the housestaff's clinical experience, all decisions about admission to the teaching service are made by a designated housestaff triage resident.
