Miracle Making Ministries opens new clinic in Augusta

Jan. 13--Dana Wilkins can't afford to be ill.

"Diabetes is an expensive disease," said Wilkins, 52, of Augusta, who has no insurance and no income. Luckily for her, eight years ago she was referred to Druid Park Community Health Center, which has cared for her ever since. And there is still a need for the free clinic even in the era of health care reform because so many people in Georgia and the Augusta area are still without coverage. But as they celebrate opening a new 3,000-square-foot clinic building, how the sponsoring Miracle Making Ministries got it for a $500 investment is a story worthy of its name.

After starting out in 1,000 square feet in November 2004 and then moving to an 1,800-square-foot clinic in 2010 and now its new one -- all on Druid Park Avenue -- it is important that it remains a part of the neighborhood, said Dr. Robert L. Williams, CEO of Miracle Making Ministries.

"We like the close proximity to the hospitals, who have been very good partners with us," he said. "We're centrally located to 80 percent of our patient base."

But getting the renovated home was the work of many donors and benefactors, Williams said. The contractor did a complete renovation of the building, costing probably thousands of dollars, but all Miracle Making Ministries had to buy were incidental things like the sign out front, he said. The tables in the five exam rooms and most of the equipment were donated by a medical remarketing company outside Atlanta, Williams said.

"We had to go pick it up," he said. "That would be a part of our $500 cost, to pull a trailer up there, buy some gas, had to buy some straps. A lot of sweat equity goes into this as well."

Almost everything else -- the materials and labor -- was donated, Williams said.

"Our benefactors made it possible," he said. "We have 25 years of that, of people stepping up to the plate and doing things like that."

The clinic is probably unique among those serving the general population in that it is free and there are no co-pays, Williams said.

"Because there are people who can't pay a $10 co-pay," he said. "There are people who can't pay a $35 co-pay. And if they can, they have to take it from something else: food, water, lights. And then in some cases, with transportation issues, they've got to use that 10 bucks to pay somebody to bring them."

Being uninsured is one of the criteria for being seen at the clinic. When the Affordable Care Act began enrolling people about three years ago, the clinic's board considered changing that population but decided to stick with the uninsured, and it turns out many still are uncovered, Williams said. Part of the original concept of the law was for states to expand the Medicaid population up to 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, but a U.S. Supreme Court decision made that optional and 19 states, including Georgia and South Carolina, chose not to. But the law also had a caveat that people below the poverty level couldn't qualify for subsidies to buy coverage, ostensibly to keep states from switching their Medicaid populations to the new coverage. What resulted is people who can't afford the new coverage and who don't qualify for Medicaid, which in Georgia is about 300,000 people and an estimated 38,000 to 42,000 in the Augusta area. That includes Wilkins, who as an adult with no dependent children cannot qualify for Medicaid in Georgia even though she has no income.

"I can't get any assistance, not unless I have a child under the age of 18," said Wilkins, who has applied for Medicaid and been denied. "If it wasn't for Druid Park here I would be able to get any" help.

Many of the clinic's patients are like her and have diabetes or hypertension, which the clinic helps to manage to keep them from getting sicker and showing up in the nearby emergency rooms, said Dr. Richard Magruder, a retired physician who has been volunteering at the clinic since 2007. Even with free care and volunteer doctors, patients often have to rely on the $4 co-pay medications and a limited number of samples, he said.

"You are limited to generics and cheaper medications," Magruder said. "But you can do a lot with those if we can get folks to agree to take them and refill them and stay on them."

With a patient base of 2,500 to 2,800 already, the clinic is probably at its limits even with a little more room to move around in, Williams said. "It is an amazing thing how it works," he said. "But that was a vision years ago. You can't raise enough cash to do this kind of stuff, year after year, time after time. It is people who step up to the plate and say this is worthy and here is my contribution toward it."

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