We're covering big news at a North Tulsa health facility; and the bottom line means better patient care.

Morton Comprehensive Health Services is now a federally qualified health center. There's only one other like it in the entire state. Morton is located on North Lansing near Pine and Peoria.

Charlotte Mayfield visited the optometry department on Monday for new glasses. It's one the newest areas of service for Morton. This department opened in November and already it's seen 335 patients and now Mayfield is one of them.

Mayfield says, "I'm glad they have this facility here that I can come and do this."

But behind the scenes there's more at work to make Morton even better. Monday, it announced that it's received joint accredidation, that's just another way of saying it can provide a higher quality of service for patients on many different levels.

Robert Sanders, Morton CEO says, "Patient safety, patient processing , drug medidication managment referrals follow up everything."

Morton has also proven it's a community partner and has a long standing relationship with OU-Tulsa.

Gerald Clancy, MD, OU-Tulsa Dean, says, "We continue to grow our relationship. Later on this year we'll work with them on mammography outreach already started a psychiatric outreach with them and has been along our side with planning for North Tulsa specialty clinic."

The ultimate goal is to develop a more comprehensive approach to the Northside and help reduce the mortality rates which are higher her than any other part of the city. Only 25% of the health centers in the country have this designation that Morton has. This is the same group that accredits hospitals.

Even more changes are coming to Morton. Another new clinic will mean oncology services will be soon be in reach for North Tulsa citizens.