Saturday, July 28, 2007
Editorial: Care, where care is needed
If the value of nonprofits needs proving, the region should look no further than the Rescue Mission's health clinic.
From the RoundTable blog
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The Roanoke Rescue Mission recognizes that the destitute need more than three hots and a cot, and that caring for the body is as important as caring for the soul.
For five years, the mission has operated a health clinic staffed by medical volunteers who know that care wrapped in sheer benevolence rather than premiums and co-pays is critical for a valley that is the urban mecca for people in need in Southwest Virginia.
The Rescue Mission has a long-established purpose of serving the homeless with more than a roof overhead. Its services now encompass not only sheltering and treating a man desperate for his next drink but also a drug-addicted woman with two children.
Pulling a life back together requires much more than a meal and a bed, the mission maintains. True recovery is not an in-and-out process.
Take, for example, the mission's plans to build transitional-living apartments for graduates of its substance-abuse treatment program.
The opening of a health clinic in 2002 was just one more piece in the mission's evolving faith-based community role.
The clinic's statistics are astounding: 6,151 patient visits in 2006 on a budget of $110,000. The value of free medical care provided: more than $1 million.
That care went to uninsured, unemployed patients who otherwise might have burdened hospital emergency rooms for care.
Yet at the mission health clinic, patients receive free treatment for chronic illnesses such as hypertension and diabetes. It offers classes on smoking cessation and a women's health group. This month, the clinic begins a support group for bipolar patients and those with depression.
The impact has been multifold. A population often distrustful of a health care system that hardly embraces them now receives consistent care. Some patients who have not seen a doctor in years have been diagnosed with chronic illnesses and are following doctor's instructions, leading to vastly improved health.
"That's been the miracle," says Joy Sylvester-Johnson, the mission's executive director.
The Nonprofit Resource Center of Western Virginia set out last week to prove the value of nonprofits. The center mailed economic impact surveys to 800 nonprofits in the region, in part to dispel the notion that nonprofits are a drain on government coffers and, as center steering committee chairman Rupert Cutler said, "are woebegone charities going around with their hands out."
Here is one nonprofit that has its hands where they need to be.
