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The Original Building Of The 9th Street Ministeries Clinic

From The Angry Bear
http://angrybearblog.com/2014/04/polk-county-arkansa-9th-street-ministries-medical-mission-clinic-is-closing.html#more-22899

Polk County Arkansas 9th Street Ministries Medical Mission Clinic is Closing

April 10, 2014 10:36 pm

Polk County, Arkansas 9th Street Ministries will be closing its medical clinic mission April 24, 2014. It has been in place since 1998 offering free medical services to those who did not have Medicare, Medicaid or commercial insurance. The reason for its closure has nothing to do with finances or lack of support although I imagine it was difficult during the Great Recession to raise funding.

“‘Because people are qualifying for insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, our free medical clinic will not be needed anymore,’ Stacey Bowser RN, 9th Street Ministries Clinic Director, stated.

‘We’ve gone from seeing around 300 people a month on a regular basis, but as people were enrolling in Obamacare, the numbers we were seeing have dropped. We were down to 80 people that came through the medical clinic in February, all the way down to three people at the medical clinic in March. Our services won’t be needed anymore, and this will conclude our mission.’”

300 hundred people is a lot of people to see in one day of the month. It is so many that I doubted the veracity of the article at first.

However, the clinic required a large pool of health care professionals to supply their needs to take care of 300 people in one day. Not all the professionals are available each month. And the health care people themselves may be ill, or may be on vacation, or may be on jury duty, etc.

So this clinic was a big deal, I think. It probably needed a pool of 20 available doctors, 40 nurses, and 80 assistants to draw from to be able to be at the clinic on "crush" day.

It was an enterprise we should be grateful that the folks in Polk County ran. It was a lot of work, and they are glad that it is no longer needed. I would think the people who visited the clinic are also happy about this outcome.

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