Saint Anthony answers call to help the uninsured

Its St. Clare Clinic program in place before national initiative began

CROWN POINT Cover the Uninsured Week, an annual nationwide call to action on behalf of millions of Americans who have no health insurance, takes place March 22 to 28.

The national campaign, which began in May 2005, is a project of the New Jersey-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest philanthropic group, which is dedicated to helping Americans live healthier. It calls on the nation’s leaders, policy-makers, health care professionals, businesses and the public to recognize the need to help what these days amounts to 46 million-plus affected people.

Saint Anthony Medical Center heard the call in 1996, long before the national effort was undertaken.

Since then, the hospital’s St. Clare Clinic has provided free primary health care services, noncontrolled substance medication and needs-based job referral assistance for qualified uninsured residents of six Northwest Indiana counties.

Seeing patient visits jump to about 4,000 in 2008, from 1,000 when the clinic opened, plans are in the works to expand and relocate St. Clare, which currently operates at 1000 S. Court St.
Patient visits this year continue on the upswing, with 446 in February, compared to 371 in January. Average number of daily visits during that period climbed to 22.3 percent from 17.7 percent.

Virginia O’Bryan, a five-year St. Clare patient whose husband is disabled, doesn’t mince words when describing what the clinic means to her.

“I would be dead if weren’t for that clinic,” she says. “They have helped me in so many ways that it would take days to explain it all. I am so appreciative; the staff is so wonderful – they have saved me so much money,” she says, adding that among its services, the clinic has been instrumental in diagnosing and treating her diabetes, removing a cyst from her eye, extracting a 22-pound tumor from her body and treating bone spurs in her feet.

“They provide me annual ultrasounds to make sure there is no cancer. They provide me mammograms, all my meds and syringes and needles … I could go on and on.”

St. Clare program director Raquel Gianfermi, a veteran registered nurse who has been in charge of the clinic for more than a year, says the recent economic downturn has caused an increase in patients, but that expansion plans were in the works beforehand.

“We’ve outgrown our present location; we’re maxed out. I am looking forward to the move, which will help us provide even better care.”

As the economic crisis has deepened, so has St. Clare’s concern for its clients. “We try to stay up on things based on the patient needs in the community,” Gianfermi says.

Danielle Lewis, of Lowell, who has been a St. Clare patient for more than a year, said the program has proved an “incredible” help for her and a family that includes her husband, a 2-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter.

“I can see a doctor when I need to. Otherwise, I would have to wait until I got into horrible shape and then go to the emergency room.”

Case manager Teresa Sealscott adds the clinic is seeing more homeless people, as well as jobless, these days.

“The homeless population is growing; we need to figure out a way to meet that need. We are able to give them one little part to getting them on the road to recovery through better health, increasing independence and wellness.”

She urges people to get to know their health care plans, and others in which they might enroll, so in the event they lose coverage, they won’t be blindsided finding out some of their care needs might not be fulfilled by another insurer.

The clinic, whose services are provided by a more than 50-person, largely volunteer staff of Saint Anthony physicians, nurses and other staff, also works to help patients transition out of the St. Clare program and find coverage through private insurance, Medicaid and Medicare, Hoosier Health Wise and the Healthy Indiana Plan. A total of 133 patients transitioned last year, compared to seven in 2006.

Sealscott points out the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration recently announced childless adults seeking insurance coverage through the Healthy Indiana Plan are being put on a waiting list, since the state has reached its federally allotted enrollment of 34,000.

St. Clare offers neither urgent care nor walk-in services. Patients must be registered with the program; appointments are required. For more information, or to make an appointment, call (219) 757-6272.

For more information on Cover the Uninsured Week, visit: info@covertheuninsured.org, or call (1-877) 655-2889.

How to help
Patient donations of $5 per visit are appreciated, but not required, at St. Clare Clinic. The clinic, which is primarily funded through Sisters of St. Francis Health Services Inc., also relies on public donations, gifts and the generosity of area service groups. In January, Circle Restaurant and Bar in Crown Point spearheaded a fund drive that raised $3,000 to benefit the Saint Anthony Medical Center Capital Campaign, which, in part, is raising money for the clinic’s expansion. On April 2, A Conservative Café, 201 N. Main St., Crown Point, will host a fund-raiser from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Half of its proceeds from that day will be donated toward the campaign/clinic. The campaign’s goal is to raise $4.5 million, half of which will be matched by an anonymous donor.