About the clinic

Let me tell you a little about our clinic. We are located in the basement of the local Episcopal Church. The clinic was the vision of our priest at that time, the Rev. Debbie Semon-Scott. None of the rest of us had any idea of the need, or even what a free clinic was. The vestry (the governing body of an Episcopal Church) invited me to be part of the exploration process. My only qualification was that I was a nurse. We spent nearly a year visiting other free clinics, talking to people, attending a meeting of the Free Clinics of Michigan. In April of 2002, Debbie and I attended a conference put on by the Free Clinics of the Great Lakes Region in Iowa, and decided we could do it – we could open a free clinic. We picked a date: September 10, 2002.

I remember that evening so well – so anxious in both the good way of being anxious and the bad way of being anxious. We had no idea how many, if any, people would walk through our door that night. We were prepared for a dozen, hoping that maybe five or six would show up.

We had nineteen people that night, and have never looked back.

The clinic is open one evening a week - on Tuesday. We open the door at 5 p.m. to start registration. We lock the door at 6 p.m., and close registration at that time. We see however many come through the door during that hour. We never know what to expect.  Since the first of this year, we have seen as few as 41 and as many as 73. Our average is 59.

There are many different things going on during the clinic hours. New patients are all screened for eligibility. It is less about our desire to take care of people and more about our realization that this is not the best option for healthcare – so if someone has other options, we want to make sure they utilize those options. During the screening process consents are signed, other needs may be addressed, and the patient is given information about the clinic. Once this process is finished, the patient is put in line to be seen by one of our healthcare providers.

Returning patients may be in to be seen by a healthcare provider or to get refills on their medications. We provide most of the medications to our patients here. I will talk about medications at another time.

On a typical Tuesday night, the clinic is staffed with two healthcare providers – usually one physician and one mid-level provider – either a Nurse Practitioner or a Physician Assistant. There are anywhere from 3 to 6 nurses working. Our dispensary is staffed minimally by a Registered Pharmacist and a Pharmacy Tech; there are lay people involved in screening, registration, pulling charts and doing data entry. Most Tuesday nights we have 25-30 volunteers present as well as the three paid staff members.

It looks and feels like chaos most of the time, but by the end of Tuesday night, the patients have been seen, the medications dispensed, orders written for lab tests, X-rays and referrals, and the volunteers have been fed.

We lock the doors, turn off the lights, and call it a night.