Remote Area Medical Clinic in Pikeville

Above: This photo (from the Lexington Herald Leader article cited below) gives an idea of the scope of the recent RAM clinic held at Pike County Central High School

The Remote Area Medical organization, called RAM, for short, was back in Pikeville, KY, this past weekend of June 19-20. The group, headquartered in Knoxville, offers free medical clinic services in various areas of the US and has visited several KY locations since 2008. As of Saturday, 750 medical, dental and vision patients had registered for services, with about the same number expected on Sunday.

Be sure to check out the article that appeared in the Lexington Herald Leader newspaper on Sunday, June 20, 2010 at

http://www.kentucky.com/2010/06/20/1315082/in-pikeville-free-clinic-serves.html

The article notes that RAM has started a KY chapter and continues to attract more volunteers for each clinic. The organization has also worked out some snags over the past two years about temporary licensing of volunteers and rules that affected certain medical professions, such as allowing optometrists to volunteer outside their offices. Above right, a volunteer nurse checks blood pressure for a patient who visited the clinic for vision and dental services.

We will definitely talk with the RAM folks in the near future to discuss how our Medical Mission can mesh with RAM activities!

Visit to St. Joseph Hospital in Martin KY

Above: Judy Salyer, Billie Turner, Polly Duncan-Collum and Neva Francis during a fact-finding meeting at St. Joseph Hospital in Martin KY

Preliminary "fact finding" continued this month as Jill Heink, Grant Developer for the Diocese of Lexington, and Polly Duncan-Collum, the diocesan director for Peace & Justice activities, traveled to St. Joseph Hospital in Martin KY on June 16, 2010, to talk to some of the staff about options for hosting the medical mission trip that the Medical Missionaries of Divine Mercy are planning for spring, 2011, in Eastern KY.

St. Joseph Hospital, formerly Our Lady of the Way Hospital, has served this area for many years. As stated on their website, St. Joseph - Martin (SJM) ".. may be small in size compared to some of today's newest hospitals, but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in tradition and care. Our 25-bed critical care access facility in Floyd County, Kentucky, provides patients with holistic, personalized care."

We met with Billie Turner, VP of Clinical Operations & Chief Nursing Officer; Neva Francis, Coummunity Outreach, and Judy Salyer, Social Worker. They talked about some of the challenges facing people in the area (lack of jobs, high rate of poverty, lack of transportation, etc.) and some of the most pressing medical issues, including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, COPD, dental problems and vision problems. As mentioned in earlier blog posts, many people in this area (and throughout the mountains, really) are "working poor" - they have jobs, but the pay is very low and the jobs do not offer health insurance. These folks don't qualify for Medicaid, and they are not eligible age-wise for Medicare. Kentucky does have the KCHIP program to provide health care benefits for children, but again, the parents often fall through the cracks of the system.

St. Joseph-Martin already provides millions of dollars in charity care each year. Representatives from St. Joseph-Martin are very involved with several local committees to provide better access to health care, and SJM has collaborated with a number of local agenicies and organizations to help extend more health care opportunities to people in the region. For instance, SJM has worked with Big Sandy Health Care, a non-profit corporation, to deliver health care in parts of Floyd County and with New Eyes for the Needy, a national organization that provides eyeglasses to individuals who are not able to afford them. There are still challenges and lots of paperwork in partnering with other agencies - for example, it can take a 5 to 6 months to actually obtain the eyeglasses.

Billie, Neva and Judy also talked about some of the satellite clinics that SJM operates, including one next door to the hospital in Martin and including clinics in Wheelwright and Betsy Layne. Billie noted that our Medical Mission might be able to work out of the Martin clinic, so we will explore that possibility in the coming months.

Our thanks to our hosts at SJM for a very productive visit. We'll be in touch over the next few months!

At right: Inside the beautiful chapel at St. Joseph-Martin