After Operation, clinic will still serve hundreds

During the nine days of Operation Healthy Delta, the Great River Charitable Clinic will be host to more than 1,000 people in need of free medical care. But after the military personnel pack up and ship out, volunteers will still be offering care to area citizens twice a month, as they have since the clinic opened in 2009.

The clinic has grown exponentially since then -- it now has 858 registered patients, compared to the 264 who were receiving care at the end of the first year of operation. Each of those people receives free medical care once a month; from exams to keep diabetes and heart conditions in check, to dental work, to eye exams, along with their necessary medications, which are dispensed at the clinic's own pharmacy.

According to Clinic Director Connie Ash, that number is likely to grow after Operation Healthy Delta, which exposed a lot of new people to the clinic and its services.

"We'll easily pick up 30 to 50 new patients from this," she said. "We've handed out a lot of new patient information packets."

The challenge of handling such a large patient load on only two nights a month comes mainly in having enough volunteers on hand, both medical and clerical, to keep the clinic running. Every other Thursday night, the clinic sees 50-60 patients, sometimes more, and around 200 prescriptions are dispensed. It takes 20-25 volunteers to keep the clinic running at its full capacity each time it opens its doors -- from doctors to receptionists to security personnel.

"If we have a normal-sized patient volume, we can be out of here by 9 p.m.," said Ash. "But if there's more, we're here until midnight. No one minds, but it is hard enough to get people to give up two nights a month out of their life -- it would be really difficult to add a third."

The clinic is always in need of more help, she said, especially from doctors and other medical professionals.

"Dr. Scott Fergus is still our medical director and has been very gracious with his time, and Dr. Stipanuk, our local hospitalist, is one of our main volunteer physicians," Ash said. "For dental, Dr. Williams is here as much as he can be, but dental is always backed up. People are likely to have to wait four to five months to have a tooth pulled. Dental is reactionary -- you tend to not have your teeth taken care of until you need something done right away, and it's expensive, and most people don't have dental insurance."

The need for medical volunteers is great, but anyone else who wishes to help with clerical work, maintenance on the building or cleaning, is also welcome and needed. Ash said the clinic has the capability to obtain pharmacy tech licensing (in charitable organizations only) for anyone who wishes to help in the pharmacy -- an area where assistance is especially needed.

Because all of the work is done on a volunteer basis, the clinic has a very low overhead -- Ash said more than 95 percent of all money it receives goes directly into patient care. Funding for the group comes from grants and community partnerships -- donations from citizens, churches and organizations.

One of the most difficult parts of funding the clinic is paying for prescription medication. The clinic purchases its medications from a wholesaler, but does not receive any kind of discount, making medications that fall outside of the $4 range, especially respiratory ones like inhalers, especially hard to come by.

Pastor Scott Trotter, who serves on the clinic's board and offers counseling at the clinic, said staff used to send some patients out to other pharmacies to get medicines that the clinic doesn't dispense, but financial limitations led to that being ended.

"Sometimes we will have patients that are in need of a drug that we don't stock or can't get," he said. "But even then, it is so rare to hear anyone complain. Everyone that gets care here is always so kind and grateful for what's being done for them."

In the future, Ash and Trotter said a grief counseling program and other mental wellness services would be a good expansion for the clinic's offerings, but would require mental health professionals to volunteer their time.

Another ways to help the clinic is to donate items that they need: cleaning and office supplies, paper products and money to help maintain the office equipment and the facility itself. For more information on the clinic and contacts numbers for volunteers and donations, visit www.greatriverclinic.org.

sharris@blythevillecourier.com