Project Access NOW Seeks Medical Volunteers

July 7, 2010 -- The mission is to organize charity healthcare into an equitable, cost-effective system.

 

The agent is Project Access NOW, an umbrella agency for medical safety net programs serving uninsured low-income people. The project focuses on northern Oregon and Washington.

 

It’s on the hunt for medical volunteers, particularly specialists. Project Access NOW wants to provide badly needed care for people with complex medical needs. They have a roster of more than 2,500 health care volunteers, but need neurologists and urologists.

 

Linda Nilson-Solares, executive director, tells potential volunteers, “We will coordinate the donated care you may already be providing. This enables you to help your uninsured patients the way you do your insured patients. We take care of details and allow you the freedom to focus on healing.”

 

With Project Access NOW, voluntary providers can cap the number of patients they wish to serve, a process outlined at www.projectaccessnow.org.

 

Its clinics provide basic care in Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington Counties and in Vancouver, Washington. The typical patient is aged 18 to 64, low-income, uninsured and ineligible for Medicare and Medicaid.

 

The clinics are among the nearly 100 U.S. projects inspired by the Buncombe County (North Carolina) Medical Society’s initial efforts in 1995. That group showed that emergency room use could be reduced and health improved for low-income patients, giving them better access to basic care.

 

When a patient’s condition outstrips basic care, Project Access NOW spares clinics the search for specialists. It’s also moving into care coordination – to help patients deal with problems that cause them to miss appointments.

 

A new database system will help it do more with less. Boeing donated $10,000, Providence $9,000 and the Meyer Memorial Trust gave a two-year grant of $114,000 toward its creation. The new system will insure appropriate referrals with complete records of patients sent for care. That’s important to medical volunteers.

 

Project Access NOW, a nonprofit entity, was formed in late 2007 with corporate and in-kind gifts and the fiscal sponsorship of the Columbia-Willamette United Way. Pharmacy Bridge, a service it helped establish, provides access to medication.   

 

Since its inception through May 31, Project Access NOW has enrolled 4,454 patients. More than 7,000 prescriptions were filled by Pharmacy Bridge since June 2008. Of $11 million in healthcare services donated last year, 72% represented hospital charges, 9% hospital health care providers and 19% non-hospital providers.

 

It’s important work. Because of Project Access NOW, a patient with a growing sore on his tongue was successfully treated for cancer. On his own he consulted a dentist, who sent him to an oral surgeon. When the diagnosis was cancer, the uninsured man had no way to handle the costs.

 

Medical care coordinated by Project Access NOW included free hospitalization and surgery. The patient navigated the healthcare system without getting trapped in a maze of confusing paperwork.

 

On July 1, Multnomah County’s Coalition of Community Health Clinics began a new relationship with Project Access NOW. A safety-net agency of 13 clinics serving more than 40,000 Portland area patients, the coalition is among the project’s founding partners.

 

To streamline their working relationship, the coalition moved certain staff members to the Project Access NOW payroll.  A variety of system changes will be worked out over the next few months.

 

Both organizations want to allocate care coordination and administrative details in a way that lets the coalition focus on its mission of improving access to quality healthcare for underserved populations in Multnomah County, said Tracy Gratto, who stepped down as executive director. 

 

Nilson-Solares acknowledges, “We will never have enough resources to serve all who are in need but we do our best to serve as many people as we can in a sustainable way.”