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The St. James The Less Free Clinic mission is to offer a faith-based healing ministry to our qualified Hanover neighbors by providing free medical and dental health care with compasion, dignity and respect.
PO Box 117
Ashland VA 23005
(804) 798-8890
Saint James the Less Free Clinic Update - July / August
I’d like to take an opportunity this month to tell you about my job at the clinic and how it has changed over the two years since I first wrote about it. I coordinate the free pharmaceuticals for patients. To give you some background, our main role is to act as a “middle man” between the clinic patients and a wonderful grant funded program called The Pharmacy Connection (TPC) which resides at Jerusalem Baptist Church in Doswell and accesses a software program that helps retrieve free long term medicines from many different pharmaceutical companies. A very capable and hardworking lady named Janice Sargent currently runs this program and has been an indispensable ally to the clinic.
We fill out a registration form with eligible patients to enroll them in TPC and send it to Janice who fills the order. We pick up the meds at Postnet before clinic. During clinic time we attain a doctor’s approval and then arrange to dispense to the patient.
We also manage the sample cabinet at the clinic which we keep under lock and key. Common medical conditions that we manage with pharmaceuticals range from hypertension, heart disease, asthma and depression. We also commonly prescribe smoking cessation drugs.
When we first opened the clinic, I could pretty much handle this process by myself. Now it takes at least two people per clinic night to manage the load – one person to handle all incoming medicines and one person to handle all of the random pharmaceutical stuff that comes up in a clinic night as patients roll through and people call in (e.g. I’m out of insulin!!) In our department at the clinic we are currently managing 71 patients with long term medications and we have an additional 48 patients that are currently inactive as far as long term medications go. We have a solid team of four people specially trained in this area to cover all clinic nights – and we could probably use one more motivated and consistent individual… (any takers?)
Linda Hall, who attends First Baptist was the first to approach me about helping over a year ago. She has been invaluable at helping to refine the system we created as she has relevant experience from working in a doctor’s office during the day. Then Micheline Plaskett came along with a librarian’s (from Gandy) sensibility and changed other time consuming procedures that I had created into easy ones! Before pharmaceuticals she had excelled at the clinic as a dental assistant. Less than a year ago Erin Seymour, brand new to Virginia and SJTL came down and filled many roles at the clinic, finally settling into the pharmaceutical position as well as other administrative roles during the week. She is excellent about remembering all the things I forget to do in an evening. I really enjoy working with all of these ladies! They are fun and exceptionally competent.
-- Julie Ericksen
If you are interested in making an ongoing pledge to the clinic or have any questions about making a donation, you can call our Board president, Lee Chambers at 798-6647 or send us a note with your intention. Checks can be placed in the collection plate payable to “Saint James the Less Free Clinic” or mailed to us at “Saint James the Less Free Clinic, PO Box 117 , Ashland , VA 23005 ”. Thank you.
If you would like to call the clinic for an appointment, a question, or to determine eligibility for services, please call 798-8890 to leave a message and we will call you back.
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