Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 20, 1994 TAG: 9411180012
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-17 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN C. KELLEHER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Why? Because we citizens can't agree either. We want federal guarantees of portable, affordable insurance, but no more governmental intervention.
We want the discounts and cost control of collective bargaining and managed care, but we want freedom of choice of physician and unrestricted access to service.
We want universal coverage, but we want someone else to pay for it (and make no mistake, the cost will be enormous).
Despite all of these differences, there is one solution that everyone seems to agree is helpful for the short term and may be part of the long-term solution.
For 20 years, Roanoke has been blessed with a shining example of cooperation and agreement in health care. A place where physicians from all four of the valley's hospitals work side by side. A place where customarily rival medical centers join hands to provide needed laboratory and X-ray services. A place supported simultaneously by private donations and public funds, personal checks and industry donations, insurance and pharmaceutical companies. A place where malpractice protection has been supported by attorneys and for which legislators have passed three Good Samaritan statutes. Most importantly, a place where patients have become volunteers, a clinic has become a gathering place, and an idea has become a focus of action and altruism.
The Bradley Free Clinic of the Roanoke Valley celebrates its birthday this month. Its 20 years of service make it one of the oldest in the United States. It has provided more than $6.5 million of service to people who lack insurance or entitlement coverage - the working poor. It has more than 400 volunteers annually: physicians, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, dental assistants, psychiatrists, dietitians, counselors and screeners, placing it among the largest clinic staffs in the state.
The Bradley Free Clinic has on site more specialty clinics than any free clinic in the United States - among them dentistry, rheumatology, gynecology, ear, nose and throat; eye, pediatrics and preschool services, dermatology, podiatry and cancer screening. In addition, referral services are provided in almost every other specialty. Our pharmacy, which dispenses $400,000 worth of medicines annually, is matched by few other free clinics.
Through these volunteers, the Bradley Free Clinic is able to provide almost $3 of service for every donated dollar, a return few charitable organizations anywhere can match.
The Bradley Free Clinic also has become a national voice for free clinics and the primary resource for communities wishing to start free clinics. Through the Free Clinic Foundation of America, housed in the Bradley Free Clinic building, more than 300 communities have requested help and information. Over the years, the clinic has provided information to 13 foreign countries, as well.
The foundation has been consulted by several congressmen, and through its involvement with the Liaison Committee on Charitable Care, advised the Clinton Health-Care Reform Task Force. We are hopeful that we will see a national Good Samaritan Act for Free Clinics on the floor of the Senate soon, having obtained interested sponsors there.
Why is there so much interest in free clinics and why do they seem to work so well? The reasons are simple and provide the ingredients necessary for providing medical care to the working poor anywhere. First, free clinics are accessible. They are in the neighborhoods where there is a need, at a time when the working poor can use the services. All the entitlements in the world don't mean anything without convenient, nearby facilities.
Second, free clinics are flexible, matching local need to local resources. The working poor have special medical and social requirements and the two cannot be separated.
Third, free clinics are efficient. They can be started in months, not years, and can begin providing services rapidly. Because they provide service through volunteers, there is no less expensive model, and because the large number of volunteers share the load, there is little burn-out.
However, the most important attribute of free clinics is curiously the least discussed when considering health-care reform. Health care must be caring! It must be provided in an atmosphere of compassion and, yes, charity.
Health care is not simply an exchange of money for technical diagnosis and treatment. It is the vulnerable sharing of our fears and pain with the hope that we can receive relief and comfort. Free clinics exemplify, most purely, the caring we can have for one another.
So, the Roanoke Valley should be proud of its Free Clinic for all its accomplishments over the last 20 years, for the thousands of lives it has touched, for the pain and suffering it has relieved among those people who are often forgotten but who struggle most, for its service as a national and international model, and for its pre-eminence in providing assistance to other communities with the same goals. But most important, the Roanoke Valley should be proud of such a fine example in our community of what is best in all of us - our willingness to care for one another.
Kevin C. Kelleher, M.D., is a volunteer physician, board member and clinic services committee chairman for the Bradley Free Clinic.
by CNB