THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603300104
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
Dr. Juan Montero, one of my favorite Chesapeakers, is ailing, but don't send him a get-well card. If you really want to make him feel better, pitch in and help expand the place called Chesapeake Care, A Free Clinic.
Montero started the clinic in 1992 for people who need medical care but can't afford it. The ``free'' in the name means just that. Patients are screened, but once they're accepted, there's no charge. The medical people who treat them work for free, volunteering time and talent on a steady schedule. Donations of equipment and medicine have helped stock the clinic. Donations of money pay its bills.
Obviously, the clinic fills a need. It sees about 4,000 patients a year, Montero says. And now there's a next step the clinic must take. ``We're busting at the seams,'' Montero explains. That's why the clinic has to move to a place bigger than its current location on Sparrow Road.
They've got a new home in sight, thanks to the generosity of a Chesapeake businessman. He's letting them have a building on Indian River Road. No strings. Rent free. A full one-third larger than the present clinic location. But it must be reconditioned for clinic use, and that's where you come in.
``We need help,'' Montero says. ``We need donations of services by an architect, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters, landscapers and an interior decorator. We need donations of building materials like lumber and hardware. And we especially need - quickly - a 486 computer because we're inundated with record-keeping.''
So figure how you would feel if you were sick and had no money and no insurance. Think about it. If you can help, the clinic phone number is 366-0303. Its fax number is 366-0037, and Montero's office fax is 420-9594. The good doctor would like to believe that Santa Claus sometimes wears overalls and carries tools. Or has a checkbook and a pen ready to roll.
Montero was coming home from a trip to his native Philippines when the idea of the clinic hit him. There he was, over the Pacific, bored with the movies and nothing to read. So his mind churned out the notion that there were enough people who cared to create a haven for health. ``If you were sick, we'd do our best to make you well,'' was the way he saw it.
That's what happened. The clinic has three paid employees to do administrative work, but everything else is a donation of time and healing skills. There's even what Montero calls a ``handshake agreement'' with Don Buckley, administrator of Chesapeake General Hospital, that means Chesapeake residents who are clinic patients can get tests done without charge.
The city of Chesapeake itself gives $5,000 a year. Montero has asked that City Council bump that up to $25,000, but the budget is still in the works.
Ask Montero why his dedication to the clinic and he talks about the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take and that good doctors try to live by. But he worries about all the changes in the medical profession spurred by lawsuits and insurance regulations. He agrees that the system needs reform but says it won't come until three things happen.
No. 1 is replacing lawsuits with a system of arbitration. No. 2 is making people who skip arbitration and file lawsuits pay the costs if they lose. That's the way they work it in England, Montero says. No. 3 is some kind of revision of the contingency fee system that gives lawyers a percentage of whatever judge or jury awards their client.
Montero, a surgeon by training, was one of the volunteers at the clinic, but he's had to take a medical leave of absence. He's having some heart problems, an ailment called cardiomyopathy. What happens is that the heart muscle fails. Right now, he says, he's doing OK, and he's pouring his energy into the clinic expansion. It won't just be a bigger clinic; there'll also be a sort of sub-clinic specializing in medical care for teenagers.
As Montero looks ahead, he also looks back at all the good things people have already done to make the clinic the success it has been. He's toted up about $720,000 in costs saved because the volunteers have been there. ``I truly appreciate the support we have had,'' Montero says. ``It's been overwhelming.''
But the bigger clinic will mean a bigger share of help from the community. That's our opportunity. As for Montero, he's a cheerful guy quick to smile, but there's no mistaking the intensity in his voice as he tells me and the rest of us, ``The clinic is my life-time commitment.'' by CNB