Free Health Care Clinic Meets the Needs of Rural Oklahoma

By: State: Oklahoma | Source: AARP.org

AARP Oklahoma recently launched what it is calling a "Virtual Kitchen Table Tour" to film the stories of Oklahomans struggling with health care. Associate State Director Craig Davis writes about his visit to a free medical clinic in eastern Oklahoma. According to the National Association of Free Clinics, more than four million people are seen by free clinics each year.

It's Wednesday night in this eastern Oklahoma town, population 279. I had come to observe the free medical clinic held here each Wednesday night. The director of the clinic had asked me not to mention the name of the town for fear of being overrun with additional patients. Already, the clinic sees more than 800 people a year and still must turn away some seeking medical care.

I'd been told finding the clinic wouldn't be a problem—take a right at the post office and look for the line of people. By the time I arrived, a full hour and fifteen minutes before the clinic was to start seeing patients, a crowd had gathered outside the small house that once served as a church parsonage. When the home was no longer suitable for family living, the church decided in 2005, rather than raze the structure, to convert it into a medical clinic. Today, the clinic operates under the direction of the church.

Inside, what had once been the living room, nearly all the available chairs were filled as three older women worked in a corner filling out paper work, typing charts and answering questions. Tonight's allotment of times to see the doctor already was filled. Some patients will be turned away.

Each week the clinic, which is funded completely by donations, can see between 20 and 23 people. Still more come to have a silver-haired, retired pharmacist fill their prescriptions from drugs that were either donated or collected from nursing homes and other wise would have been destroyed. Shelves of medicines line what was once the kitchen in the house.

In this county, nearly 1/3 of all residents have no insurance of any kind, including Medicare, according to the clinic director. Patients who come here have no other means of treatment, she says. High blood pressure, diabetes and heart problems are some of the common reasons for clinic visits. On rare occasions, when the illness is serious enough, a referral can be made to a hospital that sees indigent patients.

"We simply don't have the resources to meet the needs that are right here," she says.

These are the working poor who are sometimes forced to choose between a meal and a prescription and who often do not have gas money to come to the clinic to pick up medicines.

This night, the doctor is unable to come to the clinic and patients will be seen by a nurse practitioner. She faces her own set of challenges dealing with private insurance companies who often will not recognize her role in treating patients. The nurse also is unable to come tonight so in her place the clinic's director, a retired English teacher, will take blood pressures and complaints.

Asked what message she would send Congress regarding health care reform, she replies, "We need some kind of coverage for people who work in the service areas who cannot afford the premiums for health insurance. They are not seeing doctors. Their health needs are not being met because there are not enough free clinics to do that."