Free clinic will serve uninsured

By MIKE JAMES
The Independent

ASHLAND June 28, 2009 10:21 pm

— A free clinic for low income people without insurance in Boyd and Greenup counties is in the planning stages.
The clinic will serve adults who can’t afford insurance and who depend on emergency rooms for their routine medical needs, said Debbie Sivis, chair of the interagency task force planning the facility.
Planners hope to put the clinic in the Scope Towers apartment buildings, in a space that has been a clinic in the past, Sivis said.
The clinic will depend largely on physicians volunteering their services, and the task force has started assembling a list of potential volunteers.
It will serve adult patients, because children can get KCHIP coverage, she said.
Providing free primary care services to the uninsured will ease the burden on hospital emergency rooms, where such patients typically go now, Sivis said.
The task force has been working for about a year and hopes to complete the clinic by late fall. However, the goal may be over-ambitious, she said.
Task force members are drawn from the Boyd and Greenup health departments, Our Lady of Bellefonte Hospital, King’s Daughters Medical Center, CAReS, Shelter of Hope, the Ashland Ministerial Association, United Way, Hillcrest-Bruce Mission and the Housing Authority of Ashland.
The task force will seek start-up funding through grants, donations and fundraisers.
MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.