Tuesday, September 02, 2014YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Maureen Cronin had served on the board of Midlothian Free Health Clinic Inc. for months when she was asked to take the newly created position of executive director.
“The clinic started to grow and we started to get some federal grants,” Cronin says. “The clinic decided they needed a paid executive director and they offered me the position.”
The Midlothian Free Clinic, operated at Bethlehem Lutheran Church on East Midlothian Boulevard in Youngstown, is a provider of primary care and open the second and fourth Thursdays of each month. The church donates several rooms for use by the clinic, the only free health clinic in Youngstown.
Cronin, who works part time for the clinic, is its only paid employee. The rest of the staff – physicians, nurses and support personnel – is volunteers. The medical director, Thomas Albani Jr., M.D., oversees a rotating group of doctors with diverse specialties and from various backgrounds who donate the services provided. Albani has been with the clinic since it opened in 2008.
The clinic began in 2004 when the Rev. Rob Johnson, affiliated with both Bethlehem Lutheran Church and Christ Lutheran Church in Struthers, recognized the need for health care among the uninsured and underinsured in the region. Johnson presented the concept to a group of working and retired nurses among his parishioners. They collaborated to launch the clinic four years later.
“This clinic screams about volunteerism and how dedicated people are to a certain area of life,” Cronin says. “We draw blood. We prescribe various other testing. We provide free medication if [patients] need it and basic health care.”
The doctors follow up as needed and refer patients to other physicians in the community who treat them without charge, she explains. The clinic opens at 6 p.m. and the doctors stay until each patient is seen.
“There’s a huge need for health care for the vulnerable populations,” says Jim Benedict, a physical therapy instructor at Youngstown State University and clinic chairman.
For Cronin, a former city prosecutor and judge on the Mahoning County Court of Common Pleas, the clinic represents a return to what she describes as her “first love,” social work, which she majored in at Youngstown State University. She worked for the Columbiana County welfare department and for children’s services in Mahoning County before beginning her law career.
When Benedict approached her in 2012 about serving on the board of the Midlothian Free Health Clinic, she wanted to see for herself what it does and whom it helps.
“I walked in and saw the people sitting here. Honest to goodness, it could have been you or me sitting in any one of those chairs,” she recalls. “These people are the ones that clean the rooms at the hotel. They work in the kitchens at the restaurants.” Others had lost their jobs and were waiting for government benefits to kick in, she adds.
On average, the clinic sees 45 to 50 patients each night. The clinic has seen about 900 patients since it opened.
“We’ve never advertised since the day we opened,” Benedict says. “When we opened in March [2008], by that May we were completely booked.”
Among the most common conditions in the patients the clinic serves are high blood pressure, diabetes, hypertension and kidney disease. “When you have low income, you have poor health. It goes hand-in-hand,” Cronin remarks.
“It’s a tough population to work with. They have many challenges to living a healthy lifestyle,” Benedict adds. “Eating healthy and having the resources to live a healthy lifestyle is often a challenge.”
Many of the clients lack their own transportation and some rely on buses, Cronin says. “Sometimes they’ll have an appointment they have to cancel because their car won’t start,” she says. If a patient has to go to St. Elizabeth Health Center to have blood drawn, for example, “People have trouble getting downtown if they don’t have gas or a car. So compliance is a big thing.”
There is a need for agencies such as the Midlothian Free Health Clinic, even with the expansion of health-care coverage under the Affordable Care Act. A newly released report by the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics estimates that the nation’s 1,200 free health clinics have seen a 40% increase in patient demand over the past two years.
“One of the most common misconceptions about how the United States will look after full implementation of the Affordable Care Act is that there will no longer be a need for free and charitable clinics to continue to provide charity care as a vital component of the health-care safety net,” said Nicole Lamoureaux, NACF executive director, in releasing the report.
NACF cites a Congressional Budget Office estimate that 31 million Americans – including 479,000 Ohioans – will remain uninsured by 2024, including many individuals who qualify for coverage under ACA but face “additional barriers to gaining coverage,” including lack of transportation, language barriers and shortages of physicians.
Many health plans available through the Affordable Care Act provide what Cronin refers to as “skinny coverage.” They provide the bare minimum required with high deductibles, she says. “We’ve had people sign up for the Affordable Care Act and several months later they’re back because they just can’t afford the premiums.”
The community has been “very generous” to the clinic, Cronin says, which several years ago thrived entirely on private donations. More recently, the clinic received grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Ohio Health Department. And it continues to receive support from organizations that hold fundraisers to benefit it.
One grant the clinic received focuses on healthful food. “Low income, poor health [and] cheap food go hand-in-hand,” Cronin points out. “A lot of these people don’t understand how to cook, and I’m always laughing when I see some of these food giveaways. It’s wonderful to give them a turkey. … If you’ve never learned how to cook a turkey, what are you going to do with this 20-pound turkey when you take it home?”
Last year the clinic offered three cooking demonstrations through YSU. Students came in and provided recipes and instructions on heart-healthy eating, diabetic care and cooking from food pantries. More recently, Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. brought fresh produce and demonstrated how Ohio food-assistance-benefit cards – known as EBT cards – can be used to purchase double the quantity of produce at farmers’ markets in the area.
“It was fantastic,” reports Aaron Bonilla, an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer who works with YNDC’s healthy food and entrepreneurship programs. Many people who attended were aware of the free clinic but not that they could get healthful food.
As part of its services, the clinic provides a range of educational programs and screenings. Next month, for example, free mammograms and pap smears will be offered to women without insurance between the ages of 40 and 65. This fall, through a partnership with YSU, exercise-science and dietitian students will educate the clients of the clinic on how to eat more nutritious diets and exercise.
Other areas of “preventive treatment” Cronin sees as priorities are treating obesity and smoking cessation, which “are the primary things we’re starting to work on this year,” she says.
The impact of the clinic’s work is clear to Cronin, who regularly hears stories from patients who have been helped. She recalls one man who came in with an open wound on his foot and didn’t realize that he was a diabetic. He was referred to the diabetic educator, who made a hospital appointment for him the next day.
“He was on IVs for 2½ weeks,” she says. “He called us when he got out. He said that had we not caught that, he would have lost his leg.”
Pictured: Maureen Cronin is the part-time executive director of the Midlothian Free Health Clinic.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
CLICK HERE to subscribe to our twice-monthly print edition and to our free daily email headlines.