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St. Vincent de Paul:
Clinic puts working-class poor on path to good health
Nov. 8 breakfast to raise funds for medical, dental clinics
By Ambria Hammel, The Catholic Sun
October 18, 2007
Even though Janice Ertl is a nurse, she often finds herself treating more than just medical issues.
She recently encouraged a patient living in a hotel room to think about ways to obtain more permanent housing options.
“So much of health is interrelated with your social situation,” Ertl said.
That’s where The Virginia G. Piper Medical and Dental Clinic at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul steps in. Its all-volunteer staff shows patients how to prevent and manage disease, offering free dental and medical care for the uninsured.
Catholics can learn more about the clinic’s long-standing success from some of its doctors and dentists at the fifth annual “Called to Care: Healing Beyond Medicine” community breakfast and fundraiser Nov. 8.
Guests will also hear from former patients whose health and social conditions were transformed by one of the more than 160 medical and dental volunteers at the appointment-only clinic.
“We built this clinic with the idea of seeing over 5,000 visits per year. We’re up to over 12,000 visits per year,” Ertl said.
The clinic attributes this discrepancy to a shift in the patient population. Clinic volunteers began ministering to the homeless in 1977, but when the county took over health care for the homeless in 1994, the medical and dental clinic focused on serving the working poor.
Jose Amaral has been a regular patient at the medical clinic since January. He was originally treated for high blood pressure, but has had other ailments addressed too.
“They gave me more treatment in one visit for free than I got” at another clinic, Amaral said.
He once paid $85 per visit at a different clinic and bought overpriced prescriptions.
The Virginia G. Piper Medical and Dental Clinic operates exclusively through donations — both from patients and private donors. The clinic often raises $500,000 in one sitting during its annual community breakfast and hopes to do the same, if not more, this year.
Susan de Queljoe, director of community relations for St. Vincent de Paul, said breakfast-goers are often motivated to help the clinic after hearing these success stories.
These donations are blessings for patients like Amaral. Anxiety attacks drove him out of his construction job and the state only covered emergency medical care. While other clinic doctors didn’t want to treat his anxiety, he found help at the St. Vincent de Paul clinic.
“My anxiety is gone. I don’t even take medication for it anymore,” Amaral said.
“Our goal is to educate them and stabilize them” and transition those in need to low-cost medical clinics, Ertl said.
Much of that education is done through 18 specialty clinics where doctors treat the ailment and teach patients how the body works to help minimize future symptoms.
“We’re surprised how interested people are in learning about preventing diabetes,” Ertl said.
Chronic patients must attend classes on management and prevention. In a way, that serves as their form of payment, Ertl said.
An overwhelming majority of patients excel with their treatment.
“If we have to, we’ll make a home visit over the weekend,” Ertl said. She described a nurse who visited a patient throughout a holiday weekend because he needed two antibiotic shots a day for 10 days.
The clinic provided more than $3 million in health care last year.
Dr. Constantine Moschonas, a neurologist, knows that firsthand. The Eastern Orthodox Christian said as a believer, “part of what’s expected of you is to give of your talent freely.”
He began volunteering at the clinic two years ago after hearing about its services at a community breakfast. He proposed adding a neurology component and has been volunteering ever since.
Moschonas remembers one patient, a high school senior, who regularly had what his mom and teachers called “episodes.” The doctor determined they were actually seizures and started him on medication in June. The teen hasn’t had a seizure since.
Simple therapy solves many common problems, Moschonas said.
The clinic also has a dental side.
The level of dental decay in the younger patients repeatedly surprises Ertl. Some children without insurance have never seen a dentist before visiting the clinic.
“We just see things here where health care has been delayed,” she said. Ertl said the delay is largely due to lack of insurance and what she called “health care illiteracy.”
Professional and student dentists offer patients lessons in oral hygiene along with a thorough treatment plan that can take from six to 12 months to complete.
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