The Free Clinic of Southwest Washington reopened to in-person care this month, but the clinic has implemented some key changes to its model of patient care.
As a main hub of Vancouver health care for the underinsured and uninsured, the Free Clinic of Southwest Washington will still rely heavily on telemedicine to keep patients and staff safe from COVID-19.
Dr. Liz Rantz, the medical director at the clinic, said telemedicine should continue to increase accessibility for patients. She said people who start work at 7 a.m. and end at 3:30 p.m. can have trouble finding a doctor to see at 4 p.m. Her hope is that patients can call in on their lunch break and not worry about missing work or a doctor’s appointment.
Perhaps the biggest change for the clinic is that in-person care will now mostly be done on an appointment basis. The Free Clinic of Southwest Washington used to operate on walk-up care but has altered its practices, in part, because of the pandemic.
“Most of our visits will be telemedicine, and then if there’s something the provider thinks they really need to see, they’ll schedule the patient,” Rantz said.
Ann Wheelock, executive director at the Free Clinic of Southwest Washington, said she has concerns about mass unemployment leading to stress on the health care system. Hundreds of thousands of more people could wind up on Medicaid, and she’s unsure of where they might go to get care.
They can visit a federally qualified health center, such as Sea Mar, but Wheelock still worries about a negative trickle-down effect.
“What’s going to happen to those people when they do need to access care and you’ve suddenly added 100,000 people to the Medicaid rolls? Where do they go?” Wheelock questioned.
“The system and the networks weren’t designed for that increase,” she added. “We have a growing concern that if people can’t get reasonable appointment times to get to a (federally qualified health center), are they going to try to come here and what that’s going to mean for the people we have to take care of?”
The clinic is also concerned for undocumented immigrants, both Rantz and Wheelock said, because it is one of the few medical outlets they feel comfortable utilizing.
“They don’t have any other option,” Wheelock said.
Despite the uncertainty and concerns, Rantz and Wheelock said they believe the clinic will see improved care moving forward. They hope the new changes will help the clinic build even better relationships with the community.
“We’re trying to promote a more chronic-care model,” Rantz said. “Historically, because we were a drop-in clinic, pretty much everything we saw was acute or people we never saw before who needed a blood pressure medication filled. We’re glad to fill your blood pressure medication, but we’d like to get to know you better and make sure this is what you really need, which is not something we’ve done in the past that we need to do better.”
