Two grants totaling $9,500 will help the Good Samaritan Clinic, an interdenominational Christian ministry which provides healthcare to low-income, uninsured Burke County residents, buy equipment and develop a survival plan for the future.
A grant of $2,000 was awarded by the Mull Foundation, a local foundation operated by the First United Methodist Church, has allowed the clinic to buy a machine that tests patients who take blood-thinning medications which prevent heart attack and stroke.
“One of the difficulties we face on a regular basis with our patients is being able to reach them. Many of them don’t have phones and don’t have transportation, so it’s hard to get them in for testing. With this machine, their blood is tested within a minute and physicians can give them the medication adjustment right then so that they don’t have to wait days for the result”, said Lou Hill, executive director.
With a $7,500 grant from the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, the clinic’s board of directors will work with staff to develop a simple, long-range plan to sustain recent growth.
“The clinic has grown over the last several years and to really provide services long term at the level we’re providing them now we have to have a plan for how that will happen, and it involves having a mutual vision and understanding that board and staff are working together,” Hill said. She added that a consultant from Asheville would be in the area this week to talk about the variety of ways individuals manage change and to assist board and staff members as they move into the future.
The biggest challenge the clinic faces, as do most nonprofits, is financial sustainability due to no outside source of revenue.
“Our patients are without insurance; they’re very low income. We don’t receive federal funding, so we’re dependent upon grants, the United Way, the community as a whole, churches, individuals and civic groups,” Hill said. The clinic is also dependent upon in-kind donations. For example, Blue Ridge Healthcare donates approximately $500,000 a year for medications and services for patients such as x-rays and minor procedures.
Hill said the trick to survival is finding sources of funding that create a mix that is realistic so that all funding isn’t generated from one source. This year will be the last year the clinic receives a large grant from the state Office of Rural Health.
“We will have to find something to replace that. We have a lot of intensive work to do over the next couple of months. At the end of that time, we hope to have an actual work plan that is a guide for who’s doing what,” Hill said.
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