Clinic gives care on tightening budget

ROCKY MOUNT — Val Taylor, 57, expressed gratitude for the Free Clinic of Franklin County.

“Oh. Lord, I don’t know if I would even be living if it wasn’t for the Free Clinic,” Taylor said.

She also credited the Rocky Mount-based clinic with the survival of her husband, Fred. One of his medications for heart disease costs more than $300 for a 30-day supply, she said. The couple pays $3 for the same prescription at the Free Clinic, an independent nonprofit organization.

Taylor said she is troubled by news that the busy clinic is cash-strapped.

“The Free Clinic is truly a blessing for us and I think it is a blessing also to a lot more people,” she said.

Last year, the clinic handled 2,277 patient visits, up from 872 visits in 2010 — an increase of about 161 percent. That jump is a key reason clinic staff say the facility on South Main Street has a funding deficit of about $90,000.

“We are very stretched,” said Dr. John Merten, the clinic’s unpaid medical director and one of six physician volunteers seeing patients there. He has been a volunteer for 16 years.

In 2011, the clinic hired physician assistant Sarika Patel as a full-time employee, a step that also has boosted patient visit numbers.

The Free Clinic of Franklin County does not charge for primary medical care it provides to eligible clients. The only fees include $3 per prescription and a one-time registration fee of $5. The clinic also provides dental care for $25 a visit at the Franklin County Health Department.

“The increased volume of patients doesn’t bring in revenue for us, it just increases costs,” Merten said.

Continued economic sluggishness, regionally and nationally, has cut into traditional donation sources, such as foundations, grants and community donations.

“As a consequence, we’ve had to eat into our reserves,” Merten said.

If funding challenges continue, the clinic might end up “going backwards,” he said, cutting hours and turning away new patients. When the clinic opened in November 1992 it offered services just one night a week.

Today, the facility is open Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Tuesday from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. It has six full-time paid staff members, including Alise Culbertson, 53, who became executive director in April, replacing Lois Macdonald, who retired.

“When I came in, I saw that we were in the red,” Culbertson said.

She said the facility will remain open even if significant funding problems continue.

“I would never close the clinic,” she said. “But I would have to decrease the types of services we provide and cut hours.”

Jackie Smart, 51, and her husband, George, 50, have no health insurance. She said her husband was once a master electrician but is now disabled, and she hasn’t been able to work because caring for her intellectually disabled daughter, who is 25, often consumes her days.

Smart came to the clinic Wednesday for a referral for a free mammogram. She said news of the clinic’s money woes saddened and scared her because the facility has provided crucial resources for her family.

Patient Marvin Dodson, 47, said he takes seven medications for conditions that include diabetes and high blood pressure and could not afford the prescriptions at full retail price.

Dodson said he worked for 23 years for Bassett Furniture Industries before the company ceased domestic manufacturing several years ago. He said he works part-time as a custodian at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Rocky Mount but is not employed during the summer and has no health insurance.

Merten said people sometimes assume that the clinic serves clients who are lazy and don’t want to work. But, he said, the loss of manufacturing jobs in recent decades has left many older people with few options.

“They don’t like coming here,” he said. “They don’t like not working. They don’t like being on unemployment. And that’s the majority we see.”

In 2012, a philanthropic couple in Northern Virginia gave the Free Clinic $1 million to construct a 7,500 square-foot building. Culbertson said she hopes groundbreaking for the modular building, which will occupy a site off Virginia 40 west of Rocky Mount, will occur this fall.

The clinic also set out in 2012 to establish the Bernard Healthcare Center, a rural health center that will be an umbrella organization that includes the Free Clinic.

Merten said the health care center will be able, sometime in mid-2014, to accept Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance patients, including people who have become eligible for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Key provisions of the act take effect Jan. 1. Revenue from those patients could help support the Free Clinic, which will continue to serve eligible patients who remain uninsured, he said.

Meanwhile, the Free Clinic will be among several charities benefitting from the 2013 Smith Mountain Lake Charity Home Tour in October. Other fundraising efforts are underway. The annual Clinic Classic Horse Show in the spring is the organization’s largest fundraiser.

Culbertson said free clinics have closed in Virginia.

“But I will find a way to keep us open,” she said.

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