West Virginia Health Right Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Free Two-Day Clinic Coming To Charleston

A non-profit provider of pop-up clinics will deliver free dental, vision and medical care to those in need in Charleston.

Remote Area Medical (RAM) collaborated with West Virginia Health Right to set up a free, two-day clinic Oct. 21 and 22.

RAM works on a Community Host Group model, meaning, a local group reaches out to their organization for a visit, but must provide support to the non-profit during the duration of their stay.

Angela Settle is the CEO of West Virginia Health Right, based in Charleston, West Virginia.

“West Virginia Health Right serves the underserved, and it is a free and charitable clinic every day, 365 days a year,” Settle said. “But this is basically doing that on steroids over two days. And we have to get all the volunteers, raise all the money to support it, you know, to pay for the rooms for their staff to feed all the volunteers, you know, things like security and porta potties and all that kind of stuff we are responsible for doing as a community host partner.”

This is not the first time West Virginia Health Right has teamed up with RAM to provide health care to those in need. The first clinic was set up in Elkins after the 2016 flood.

“The next year, it moved to the Bible Center School, just because it’s a nice, you know, bigger location and kind of more central to southern West Virginia. And we stayed there and had one every year, I can’t tell you how many we had,” Settle said. “I’d say probably seven or eight.”

According to RAM clinic coordinator Brad Hutchins, their model works well in West Virginia because it meets patients where they are, literally and figuratively. All services are free and no ID is required.

“Because honestly, it doesn’t matter, at least not to, not to us,” Hutchins said. “If a patient comes in and they have a need, if we have the capacity to serve them, that’s what we’re there to do. That’s what the volunteers sign up for. So ultimately we just come and dedicate that amount of time to see as many patients as that time allows.”

Due to time constraints, patients of the RAM clinic should be prepared to choose between dental and vision services.

“You know, so, RAM we see that, you know, we’re not the solution, of course, but we are a resource that’s able to bridge the gaps and bring needed vision, medical or dental services, to these, to these areas that are underserved,” Hutchins said.

Services available at the free RAM clinic include dental cleanings, fillings, extractions and X-rays. Services also include eye exams, eyeglass prescriptions, eyeglasses made on-site, women’s health exams and general medical exams.

Starting January 1, 2014, West Virginia expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Under the expanded eligibility guidelines, adults aged 19 to 64 are eligible for Medicaid with a household income up to 138 percent of the poverty level.

For a single adult in 2023, that amounts to $20,120 in total annual income.

Settle praised West Virginia’s expansion of Medicaid but said there are still a lot of people out there in need who cannot qualify.

“We know that expanding Medicaid was wonderful, that helped, but there’s still a lot of people out there in need,” Settle said. “Because, you know, there’s a lot of working poor, and I mean that lovingly – people that work every day, but maybe make too much for Medicaid, but they don’t qualify, or the benefits that they qualify for are too pricey.”

Medicaid enrollment in West Virginia is up 80 percent since 2013 but is expected to continue to decline as disenrollments continue after a three-year pause for the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, benefits were expanded, and restrictions loosened to help immediate needs across the country. Now, those benefits have run out.

“People are deciding between health care, and the basic necessities like food, utilities, et cetera,” Settle said. “So we want to be instrumental in removing that. We want to make sure that people have access to health care.”

An integral part of continuing health care is follow-up appointments. Hutchins says West Virginia Health Right will help with care plans.

“And she provides her organization a lot of support, not only throughout the planning, and execution, but also they have a big hand in the follow up care process as well,” Hutchins said. “So we don’t actually provide any services that we can’t first align the follow-up care plan for because it benefits no one for us to come in and identify an issue with the patient without offering some type of solution.”

Settle said Health Right aims to be a source of resources and information to the public it serves.

“Well, we don’t want to be a dead end, you know, if somebody found out that they have an issue that day, we want to certainly, you know, be a follow-up source for them, where they can come to and get that rectified,” Settle said. “It’s not enough to just see them that one day, we want to make sure people have follow-up care.”

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

Free Clinic Receives Federal Funding For Expansion

One of the state’s largest free clinics is expanding with help from federal funds.

U.S. Sens. Shelley Moore Capito and Joe Manchin announced $4 million Monday to assist in expansion efforts for West Virginia Health Right. The clinic’s Care in Action Expansion Campaign puts the total cost at $12 million dollars.

On its website, Health Right claims the number of patients it serves annually at its three clinics in Charleston and five mobile unit sites has nearly tripled from 15,000 patients in 2014 to 42,000 patients in 2022.

“It is essential that they have the space needed to expand their physical footprint and accommodate this tremendous growth,” Capito said. “With this funding, the clinic will be able to be expanded to a new three-story building adjacent to the current facility, and renovate the existing clinic to best serve the needs of the Charleston community.”

The funding from the U.S. Health and Human Services will go towards the cost of a three-story addition to the main clinic. The expansion will house additional space for clinical services, including dental, vision and behavioral health, as well as additional office space for staff and volunteers.

The clinic says the project is “shovel ready” and will be completed in 16 to 18 months after construction begins.

Health Right Urges City Not to Criminalize Needle Possession

The free clinic West Virginia Health Right held a press conference yesterday (Wednesday) in Charleston in response to a newspaper article that lumped Health Right’s Needle exchange program in with the City of Charleston. Charleston’s needle exchange program recently came under fire from Charleston Mayor Danny Jones and Police Chief Steve Cooper due to an increase in the number of needles found in public places.

The Kanawha-Charleston Health Department launched a needle exchange program in 2015 to reduce the risk of exposure to HIV and hepatitis C.

Supporters of the program point to the low rate of HIV outbreaks in Charleston as well as a decrease in Hepatitis C cases as proof the program’s working.

But Charleston City Council is considering legislation that would criminalize needle possession.

Health Right CEO Angie Settle argues her organization’s needle exchange program has been around since 2011, four years before the city’s, and has helped a lot of people.

“It happened because we’re a medical home,” she said. “We started to see an uptick in the opioid problem. We started to see people with IV drug use. We had patients coming in presenting, saying they had diabetes and they would get insulin prescribed and then they would leave the insulin.”

She said they quickly realized what was going on.

“And at that point we made an internal decision to really try to comprehensively talk to those people. Try to get them to rehab. If they’re at the point where they absolutely will not go to rehab we wanted to have a safeguard because we also test for hepatitis C and HIV and we have a program there for that. So we wanted to have a mechanism to prevent the transmission of disease.”

Settle said Health Right takes a hard line with their needle exchange program. Participants are issued 30 needles. If they don’t bring 30 back, they’re out. When they come in for the exchange, they also have the option to meet with a social worker to talk about rehab or get treated for other ongoing health conditions.

She said about one in three people in the program end up entering rehab.

“Now I’m not saying they do it on that visit, it may be the second visit, it may be the third visit, they may be here out and about and suddenly a week later they’re ready to go into treatment.”

Settle said she hopes city officials will consider a compromise approach to keeping the harm reduction programs open.

Health Right is making a change to the kind of needles it provides in response to the recent criticism from city officials. The new needles are retractable — meaning that once used, they’re sealed in plastic.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Marshall Health, Charleston Area Medical Center and WVU Medicine.

West Virginia Health Right Launches Mobile Dental Clinic

West Virginia Health Right launched a new mobile dental health clinic today at a Charleston ribbon cutting ceremony.

The unit will travel to six underserved West Virginia counties – McDowell, Logan, Boone, Clay, Roane and Harrison, offering services primarily for free. West Virginia Medicaid – the largest provider in these counties – does not cover preventative dental services for adults.

Dr. Raj K. Khanna & Senators Ron Stollings, Tom Takubo & Bob Plymale share a laugh inside the new mobile dental unit.

“I anticipate at probably at least 500 per county, per year. My guesstimate is about 3000 people a year,” said Angie Settle, executive director of West Virginia Health Right. She said the idea was born soon after last year’s floods, but it took them about six months to pull together funders and partners for the new project.

Health Right is partnering with Marshall University who will providing a faculty member to oversee the mobile dental clinic.

“As the program goes maybe next spring they’ll take on more residents to help add more care. Because we have the capacity for two dentists at a time, actually because it’s three chairs and a hygienist so you could have three chairs going at the same time,” said Settle.

To begin with the mobile clinic will travel three days a week – Settle hopes to increase that to five, but said increasing days will be contingent on funding.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation, Charleston Area Medical Center and WVU Medicine.

Free Clinic Provides Care for Communities Impacted by Floods

The first free health clinic offering comprehensive services ran this past weekend, with more than 600 people receiving care from about 350 volunteer healthcare providers. Motivated to help folks in communities hit by record-breaking flooding last summer, West Virginia Health Right partnered with the nonprofit Remote Area Medical to offer the free health clinic over two days.

The event was based at Elkview Middle School in Kanawha County – the heart of the flood zone. Volunteers in bright green shirts sat in rows at lunch tables checking patients in. They asked for a name and the service desired, but little else. Unlike many free clinics, everyone was welcome, regardless of medical insurance status.

“This is an event that we’re saying right up front – you know no judgement zone – we know there are challenges out there,” said Angie Settle, CEO of West Virginia Health Right.

“We know you might have insurance, but we also know there’s a $5,000, $10,000 deductible, and rather than take that and go buy yourself a pair of glasses or do something for yourself, you may take your child to the doctor, or you’re going without,” she said.

Health Right began planning the clinic just three or four days after the June 2016 floods that devastated much of the central and southeastern parts of the state. It’s the first clinic of its kind in West Virginia, although Remote Area Medical – the partnering non-profit group – has been holding these types of clinics around the world since 1985.

Settle said even without the flood many of these families were struggling.

“So you think… ‘Do I want to have groceries this week, or can I take $125 and go to the eye doctor?’” said Settle. “A lot of times they are just going to skip it.”

We’re in a classroom where 20 dental chairs are set up. Volunteer providers clean teeth, fill cavities, and extract rotten or broken teeth.

“It’s obvious the need’s there, just from the severity of the mouths we’re seeing,” she said. “Somebody had seven teeth extracted at one time. So think about that…. Somebody’s teeth are so diseased that they had to have seven teeth extracted at once.”

Because a lot of insurance plans, including Medicaid, do not cover preventive dental care or eye exams, the vast majority of the patients came for those two services, Settle said.

Two were Patricia Taylor and her adult daughter Amanda.

“We had our teeth pulled, we had our eyes examined, and it was wonderful,” said Patricia. She held a napkin over the front of her mouth where four teeth had been pulled. Neither Taylor had insurance.

Patricia said her retirement plus Social Security is $100 a month too high to qualify for Medicaid and private insurance is too expensive. Her daughter Amanda was struggling with health issues and recently stopped working – she said she does qualify for Medicaid, but had yet to enroll.

When I met them they had already been at the clinic almost 12 hours, having begun waiting at 1 that morning.

“This gave us an opportunity to get some services done that we couldn’t afford, or we’d have to put some type of bill on hold to try and get that done,” said Amanda.

Patricia gave the example of getting poison ivy several weeks earlier. It cost her $107 to go to her primary care provider – money she took from her utility bill.

The clinic had providers had in almost every discipline – chiropractic, physical therapy, orthopedics. All were volunteers.

“Everybody here is putting in their own time, time they could be working and making money to give us an opportunity to get some kind of preventative or maintenance care,” said Amanda.

By far the most popular were dentists and eye doctors. Patients were able to come in, get a full eye exam, and receive a pair of glasses made the same day.

As the day wore on, though, the volunteer providers had to turn away patients seeking dental and vision care. Settle hopes to recruit more of these providers next year, especially since the event will likely grow as word gets out.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation.

Free Medical Clinic Planned This Weekend

A free medical clinic for West Virginia flood victims and others in need is set for this weekend in Kanawha County.

The clinic will be held Saturday and Sunday at Elkview Middle School. Services will be offered beginning at 6 a.m. each day.

It is being hosted by Charleston-based West Virginia Health Right, which provides free medical, dental and vision health services. Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit group based in Rockford, Tennessee, will run the clinic.

Organizers say the school’s parking lot will open at midnight each day and tickets will be distributed beginning at 3 a.m. All individuals with tickets will be served.

Up to 500 volunteers are expected to assist at the clinic.