It’s a Wednesday afternoon, and Volunteers in Medicine Christian County is set up in the meeting room of the Clever Public Library. It’s a tight fit: The check-in desk is right next to a table surrounded by nurses in front of a screen which marks off something like an examination room. Checking in are are three Russian-speaking women and their translator.
VIM CC is a nonprofit organization that provides primary care to qualifying residents of Christian and adjacent counties. ‘Qualifying’ in this case means between the age of 18 and 64, uninsured and at or below the 200% federal poverty line. ‘Primary care’ means a range of things:
"So we’re taking care of high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, thyroid problems, asthma, COPD, muscular-skeletal complaints, anxiety, depression," said John Lorette, medical director of VIM CC.
Volunteers in Medicine — the national organization — started in 1993 when physician Jack McConnell started a free clinic on Hilton Head Island, SC with a group of largely retired medical professionals. In 2021, the organization shuttered, but the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics continues the program.
Lorette — a retired physician whose career included 28 years with Mercy and a number of humanitarian aid trips to Ecuador — and a group of medical professionals founded Volunteers in Medicine Christian County in 2018, starting with a county-wide needs assessment, which found that about 10,000 residents of the county could benefit from services like theirs. Though COVID and Medicaid expansion have both altered those numbers since then, Lorette said there’s still a significant need for physicians to perform preventative checkups.
"I worked in an ER for years," Lorette told KSMU, "and sometimes there’s no signs or symptoms, it’s just [that] your blood pressure’s elevated or your sugar’s elevated."
In addition to Lorette, VIM CC now includes two family physicians, an internist, a nurse practitioner, five registered nurses and three front desk staff — plus a med student who I met at the clinic.
Along the way, the nonprofit has met a number of challenges. For one, there were the logistics of the operation. That’s according to Rachelene Middleton, primary care physician at Mercy and an early member of VIM CC.
"I think none of us really realized how hard it is to start a clinic from the ground up," she said. "Where do we see patients? How do we see patients? What resources do we have? What about malpractice insurance, and how do we pay for labs, and medications, and all of those things that, when you work for a big company like Mercy or Cox I don’t think you really have to think about that often – you show up, you do your job, you put the orders in and someone makes it happen."
To fill some of those gaps, the group has turned to the community for support. For medication, they have a partnership with Alps Pharmacy. Quest Diagnostics provides lab services for free. The ambulance they operate out of was donated by the Christian County Ambulance Department, and their first set of equipment and supplies was paid for with a grant from the American Academy of Family Physicians.
"When you’re providing free healthcare, you have to have that help and support," said Kim Cochran, VIM CC volunteer and women's health practitioner at Ferrell-Duncan. "Otherwise, it doesn’t do us any good to have somebody with a known problem and not be able to help them."
Surprisingly, maybe the biggest challenge has been getting people to show up. Lorette said that’s in part because 'free primary care' sounds too good to be true.
"People can’t come to grips with the fact that it’s free." He laughs. "[They’re] always like 'okay, what’s the catch? What else do you need from me?' I'm"
The original idea for VIM CC was to meet communities where they are — hence the ambulance. But the volunteers found that clinics were better attended when they happened at a consistent place at a consistent time. They also tried Saturday and evening clinics, but daytime clinics yielded better results. That being the case, they run a monthly clinic at Union Hill Church in Nixa and recurring clinics at a few other locations. In fact, VIM CC is in the process of installing a permanent clinic at Union Hill, which they plan to unveil within a month or two.
For information and to see dates for upcoming clinics, visit VIMChristianCounty.org.
Correction: the story was changed to clarify the precise details of VIM CC's community support.