 It’s Tuesday evening at the Moore Free Care Clinic in Carthage. A line of patients who have appointments is forming in the hallway, and the front office teems with activity. “You can see we already have a number of volunteers here, too, and clinic hasn’t even started yet,” says Clinic Director Laura Tremper-Jones.
Most of those volunteers come from one source. “FirstHealth physicians, nurses and clerical help are the backbone of our clinic,” says David Bruton, M.D., the Moore Free Care Clinic’s board chairman.
Tremper-Jones takes Dr. Bruton’s assessment of FirstHealth volunteerism a bit further: “We have their physicians who volunteer, nurses, physical therapists, lab techs, clerical personnel,” she says. “You name it. We couldn’t do what we do without them.”
In addition to supplying many of the operation’s volunteers, FirstHealth has an integrated relationship with the Moore Free Care Clinic that includes free laboratory testing and imaging. “They treat our patients with the same dignity and care that paying patients receive,” says Dr. Bruton. “Our patients who need specialty referral are also seen in their clinics free of charge. The Diabetes Self-Management Program and FirstQuit, for smoking cessation, are particularly helpful.”
Dr. Bruton, a retired pediatrician and a former member of FirstHealth’s Board of Directors, helped put the clinic on the map and is still involved in some way almost daily.
A private, volunteer-based, non-profit organization, the Free Care Clinic provides primary, preventive and specialty health care to the growing number of Moore County residents who fall beneath the federal poverty level. Many of the people who find their way there every Tuesday and Thursday evening are employable but can’t afford health care or health insurance.
“When we first opened back in April two years ago, we had, maybe, a couple hundredpatients that year,” says Tremper-Jones. “We’re up to well over 1,100 patients now, and the year is not over yet.”
The Free Care Clinic “plan”
Volunteering physicians help keep the clinic’s doors open. “I think the clinic does a verygood job here in terms of maintaining continuity of care,” says one of those physicians, David Hipp, M.D., an internist with Pinehurst Medical Clinic who fills in at the Free Care Clinic on an “as-needed” basis.
Patrick Henderson, M.D., is a retired ENT (ear, nose and throat) physician
who volunteers at the Moore Free Care Clinic.
“The doctors may not always be the same, but the plan is basically the same,” he says.
The “plan,” as Dr. Hipp explains it, is to try and treat mostly chronic cases before they become acute and require more expensive medical treatment. “It’s a very necessary thing for our community,” he says. “A lot of these people who were being seen at other area clinics got cut off, because they lost their medical insurance or lost their job. But their medical problems didn’t go away when their job went away.”
According to Robert Bahner, M.D., who knows what he’s talking about, the Free Care Clinic treats people before they wind up in the emergency room. Dr. Bahner, who has volunteered at the clinic since it opened, is a physician with Sandhills Emergency Physicians, the group that provides Emergency Department coverage for all three FirstHealth hospitals.
“We’ve evolved into a chronic care clinic (at the Free Care Clinic), which is something we didn’t envision at the beginning,” he says. “We see a lot of people who really have no resources, but have chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure. And these patients are caught, because they have a condition that won’t go away, but they don’t have the money to pay for the medications they need.”
Tracking down those medications at an affordable price takes a labor-intensive and creative approach. “We don’t get any state or federal funding,” says Tremper-Jones. “We do buy a lot of our drugs through (FirstHealth’s) Standard Drug in Troy at greatly reduced prices. We have a $442,000 budget this year, and everything is donations or grants.”
As a result, Tremper-Jones and her staff often go online to sites to find medications available through Patient Assistance Programs provided by various pharmaceutical companies. FirstHealth allows the clinic access to a computer program that helps locate these assistance programs and then prints out the forms that patients need to apply for aid.
“Retired” volunteers
Retired FirstHealth-affiliated physicians who volunteer make a unique contribution to the Moore Free Care Clinic. Patrick Henderson, M.D., retired from ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) practice at Pinehurst Surgical several years ago. Now he sees anywhere from four to 10 patients at the Free Care Clinic the second Tuesday of every month.
“I had a good practice, and I enjoyed it and feel like I should give something back to the community,” he says.
Dr. Henderson, who practiced in Pinehurst for more than 30 years, wishes more doctors would follow his lead. “There are a lot of retired doctors here,” he says. “We should have the best free clinic in the world.” 
For more information about the Moore Free Care Clinic, and how you can get involved, visit the clinic’s Web site at www.moorefreecare.org or call (910) 947-6550.
Tom Lineberger, M.D., wasn’t sure what he was getting into when he volunteered to help some children at risk for potentially life-threatening illnesses. Now, every summer for several years, he’s been seeing children from Belarus, a former Soviet republic.
Dr. Lineberger is an internist at Pinehurst Medical Clinic’s South Office in Southern Pines.
“We just don’t see kids as part of this practice as a rule,” he says. “But, you know, the kids enjoy the program so much and so do we. In fact, we treat many of the same kids year after year.”
To look at the tanned, smiling faces of these visiting Belarussian children you’d never know they face some unique health challenges. They have been exposed to high levels of radiation since the day they were born. It’s been more than two decades since the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl exploded, releasing 90 times as much radiation as the Hiroshima bomb. Due to its proximity to the ill-fated reactor, Belarus sustained about 70 percent of the known radiation damage. It’s been more difficult to calculate the multifaceted health consequences resulting from the fallout.
 “We always give the kids a checkup and do blood work to make sure they are still doing all right,” says Dr. Lineberger.
This summer, there were four children to be seen, ranging in age from 11 to 16.
Dr. Lineberger and his staff donate their time for the annual visits, and Pinehurst Medical Clinic picks up the tab for the lab work. A nonprofit Humanitarian Group known as ABRO (American Belarussian Relief Organization) coordinates the summer visitation, and First Baptist Church of Southern Pines sponsors the children as part of its mission outreach program. |
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