RIVER VALLEY and OZARK AREA — Since the River Valley Christian Clinic in Dardanelle opened its doors in January 2007, the free health clinic has served about 6,500 patients, distributing the equivalent of $4 million in donated services.
Already 2009 is poised to be a record-setting year with 2,000 visits through July compared to a total of 1,920 in 2007 and 2,528 in 2008.
"It's been picking up speed as the economy gets worse," Marcia Chronister, the clinic's administrator, said. "We're seeing more people as they get laid off, lose their jobs, lose their insurance."
Still, as Christian Clinic Board Vice Chairman Don Guess said, the clinic's volunteers sometimes feel like they "haven't even scratched the surface."
Guess speaks at churches and civic groups to spread the word about the clinic, but he said he still comes across people who don't know about it - people like the woman he met the other day, living so close to the clinic with no idea of the help it could provide.
"The doctor prescribed her a medicine and told her, 'if you want to live, take this every day,'" Guess said. "Well, she figured out that if she took it every third day, she could afford to buy a few groceries. So here you've got a situation you can't believe: living four miles from the front door of that clinic and she's doing that." The clinic, at 1714 Arkansas 22, is a nonprofit organization that runs entirely on grants and donations. It has one paid full-time employee in Chronister, the administrator, and is overseen by an 11-member board of directors with representatives from Pope and Yell counties.
The clinic opens at 6 p.m. on the first and third Thursdays of each month. It is staffed by a small ar-my of volunteers - usually about 50 people, including an average of four doctors, two dentists, one optometrist, three pharmacists, plenty of nurses and nonprofessional volunteers who assist with everything from baby-sitting to ushering patients through lines so they don't get lost.
They may serve anywhere from 100 to 125 patients per clinic. There is a follow-clinic on Tuesdays. The clinic also offers special diabetic clinics and women's colposcopies (to test for precancerous conditions in cervical tissue) on a quarterly basis and smoking-cessation and weight loss classes on a weekly basis.
River Valley Christian Clinic partners with local churches that take turns providing a small meal for the volunteers and a minister who is available to talk to any of the patients who seek extra guidance. According to its Web site, the clinic's mission is "to provide health care (medical, dental and optical) and spiritual guidance to anyone in the River Valley who cannot afford to access traditional health care."
The clinic kept figures on the clinic's spiritual services through April 2008: 169 people were prayed with privately, nine gave their hearts to Christ and five rededicated their lives to Christ.
Everyone is entitled to one free, no-questions-asked visit to the clinic. To received ongoing care, patients must show that they are uninsured, not eligible for Medicaid or Medicare and fall within 125 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines - although Guess said they're not in the business of turning people away. Even people with insurance may be saddled with staggering debts due to a medical emergency or be facing other difficulties that make traditional health care out of reach.
Guess said that 125 percent cutoff will probably expand in the future. So far it has only served as a conservative starting point - not a place to stop, but one to grow from. Each of the founding board members like Guess thought he had an idea of what the need was like, but Guess said the reality has blown him away.For example, in Poke, Yell and Johnson counties, 22.5 percent of the residents would qualify for the clinic based on its income guidelines alone, he said.
Guess said the patients have been 94.5 percent white (3 percent Hispanic and 2.5 percent black), living on the edge of poverty and hiding in plain sight.
"It's just not something you realize until you really get involved in it," Guess said. "I had worked here for 42 years [as a banker]and I didn't even realize it."
Becky Pledger, who has volunteered with the clinic since day one, agreed. Pledger spent 28 years working for the Department of Human Services.
"You talk about people going out of the country for mission trips, but the mission is right here in your backyard," Pledger said. "I knew it was here because I worked for DHS, but then again, I really didn't know it was here ... You can even be involved in the process of preparing for one of the clinics, but until you actually come on clinic night - it'll blow you away. It's just incredible."
Not only can meeting all the patients be overwhelming, Pledger said, so can meeting the other volunteers.
"So many people coming together to do one thing, help people they don't know," Pledger said. "It's a blessing, and that's an understatement."
Guess estimated they have about 750 volunteers. Volunteers are so plentiful, in fact, that there is a waiting list. The schedule is rotated every six months to give everybody a chance to take part.
It's important to the board chairman, Dr. James Carter, that the volunteers at every level are of a variety of faiths. The clinic is strictly nondenominational, and hundreds of churches have been involved, he said. He said he is proud the clinic is something everyone can have in common.
"We don't worry about all the things that a lot of people bicker about," Carter said. "I think it has really helped bring our river valley together. I think it's been a good, positive effort, not only for the patients we serve, but for the people who volunteer. For so many of them, it's made a big difference in their lives."
Carter graduated from medical school at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in 1966. He was a flight doctor during the Vietnam war, and he started practicing in Russellville in 1971. Over the years, he participated in mission trips in Brazil.
"All of us who are in medicine see patients who can't afford health care, who have big bills," Carter said. "There are so many people out there who just manage their medical care from one crisis to the next. [So doing something like this] was something I had inmy mind for a long time."
When Carter started getting serious about the idea in 2006, it didn't take him long to find a group of like-minded individuals.
"It's interesting how God works things out," Carter said. "There were a few doctors, a few business people, about five or six of us who all got the idea at the same time."
The group traveled to a free clinic in Mountain Home and adopted much of its setup in Dardanelle, where a vacant, fully equipped clinic formally occupied by St. Mary's Regional Hospital was just given to them, making all the difference in the dream becoming a reality. The gift was followed soon after by another: a free remodeling job. And the giving hasn't stopped since. Carter said his eventual goal is to have the clinic staffed during the day by retired physicians willing to donate their time.
Guess said each dollar they get in donations ends up being about $20 to $25 by the time it reaches the patient (because of all the volunteer work along the way). Chronister said she is constantly amazed at how much they are able to do with so little and the success of something that relies so heavily on the goodwill of so many people - not just medical professionals.
"We get people from all ends of the spectrum," Chronister said. "I just love them. They're precious, from the patients to the volunteers, they're just awesome. And we've been around long enough now that a lot of our patients are coming back now to help volunteer. They got help, and now they want to give back."
More information is available by calling the clinic at (479) 229-2566 or visiting www.rvchristianclinic.org. Guess may be contacted about speaking engagements at (479) 858-1687.
River Valley Ozark, Pages 59, 64 on 08/27/2009