RAM clinic provides $86,000 in free medical care in Louisville area
Over the weekend, Sept. 23 and 24, some 189 individual patients received over $86,000 in free dental, vision and medical care during Remote Area Medical (RAM) clinic held at Jefferson County High School.
This was the second time Emory University student volunteers have served as the community host group to bring such a clinic to Georgia. In 2021 RAM served 219 patients and provided over $120,000 of similar free healthcare services including 88 made-to-order pairs of glasses.
“The main reason we chose Louisville is because a lot of rural communities in Georgia have limited access to health care,” said Shivani Lam, the current Co-President of Emory RAM, a group of college students who travel to volunteer at RAM clinics throughout the United States several times a year. “A lot of the rural counties have healthcare provider ratios lower than the statewide average and a lot of our rural hospitals are at high risk of closure. We wanted to put our clinic in one of those communities where there was a great need.”
Host groups like Lam’s coordinate with RAM to organize clinics like this, raiding funds and recruiting volunteer medical professionals from the surrounding area to provide free dental, vision and medical care for anyone who shows up without even asking for identification.
“A lot of the individuals who come to clinics like this are underinsured or uninsured, so dental and vision exams aren’t really covered by their insurance,” Lam said. “We have a lot of patients who have gone over 10 years or maybe never have had a dental or vision exam. Because of stats like that, we really wanted to revisit Louisville.”
Brad Hutchins, the RAM Clinic Coordinator for the Jefferson County clinic, said that 176 volunteers supported the event. Around 60 of the volunteers came from Emory.
“At this one we made glasses for patients. We provided extractions, fillings and cleanings and offered medical exams. Dental is usually the most requested, but at this particular clinic, there was just as much need for medical as there was for dental,” Hutchins said. “Typically the medical services we provide aligns with what you would see at urgent care. We also had women’s health and offered pap smears.”
Many of the optometrists and physicians present were from Emory University. Both facutly and students from the Dental College of Georgia in Augusta provided those services.
“We also had volunteers who came down from their own private practices to support the clinic and we really appreciate them as well,” Lam said.
Leigh Davis, Jefferson County Department of Public Health’s Nurse Manager, set up a resource booth at the event to hand out free Covid tests and let attendees know what services they could get at the county health department.
“When they did this before we ended up with some hypertension referrals for people who didn’t have health insurance,” Davis said. “We were there letting people know that services don’t have to stop here, you can go to the health department and continue some things.”
Through the county health department women who are over 40, do not have health insurance and income qualify can receive free mammograms and pap smears through their Breast and Cervical Cancer Program.
Davis said that she was impressed with the scale and thoroughness of the RAM clinic set up at Jefferson County High School.
“They had interpreters there who also served as, like, chaperones, who not interpreted for patients at registration but also directed them as to the next steps and where they were supposed to go,” Davis said. “It was massive and they had people volunteering from all over.” Most of the people Davis and her representatives talked to were from Jefferson, Burke and Washington counties, but there was one family who had driven down from Savannah.
“These clinics are such a joy because it is so beautiful to see healthcare providers and volunteers from different cities and backgrounds come together and provide these communities with the resources they need,” Lam said. “We definitely want to continue holding clinics in rural Georgia. We’re not sure whether we will have it in Louisville again, but we’re going to try to increase the frequency of them because there is such a great need and we want to help out as much as possible.”
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: RAM clinic provides $86,000 in free medical care in Louisville area
