RURITANS' HELP SOUGHT TO KEEP LOW-COST MEDICAL AID

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 18, 1992                   TAG: 9202180134
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-4   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: KIM SUNDERLAND
DATELINE: RADFORD                                LENGTH: Medium
RURITANS' HELP SOUGHT TO KEEP LOW-COST MEDICAL AID
A doctors' program that offers uninsured people medical care and prescriptions at low cost needs help.
To help get it, Dr. Robert Solomon, a Radford Community Hospital internist working on the program, will ask the Radford-Fairlawn Ruritan Club tonight if it will take over some of the administrative and fund-raising activities.
The meeting starts at 7 at the Fairlawn Bonanza.
"We need a group to be behind it," Solomon said Monday.
The program - started about 2 1/2 years ago by the New River Valley Physicians Association - is similar to the Pulaski County Free Clinic and the Free Clinic of the New River Valley.
The Program for Special Medical Care also is available to anyone meeting federal poverty guidelines if a patient has no insurance and is not covered by Medicare or Medicaid.
Following a health department screening, an eligible person receives a card and is referred to one of 20 participating doctors in the valley.
Doctor visits cost the patient $3. Prescriptions cost $3 each. The money goes back into the program to pay for medications.
When the program began, Solomon said medications cost about $10,000 a year. That rose to $24,000 last year and is expected to be about $36,000 this year.
Like the free clinics, the program receives many donations from drug companies, but with the spiraling costs of additional medications, more fund-raising is needed.
Support provided by a local organization such as the Ruritan Club will help, Solomon said, as will United Way and more "in-kind" services from medical professionals, which the program hopes to recruit.
"The free clinics are important, but this is another place people can go," Solomon said. "And with a national health care plan, it won't be needed anymore."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB