It was a picture-perfect morning last Oct. 14, when Volunteers in Medicine of Southern Nevada (VMSN) unveiled the Ruffin Family Clinic — our second nonprofit medical clinic in Las Vegas — to the community. It marked the culmination of years of fundraising and unwavering optimism by our founder and president, Dr. Florence Jameson. At nearly 13,000 square feet, the Ruffin Family Clinic is more than twice as large as our Paradise Park location, which opened its doors in 2010.
Despite the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), approximately 228,000 Southern Nevadans still do not have access to health insurance. In addition to providing patients with their day-to-day medical needs, the Ruffin Family Clinic includes mental and behavioral health, dental health, vision care and social services and has the capacity to see significantly more patients in one of the city’s highest poverty zip codes.
Days like Oct. 14 happen because our community rallied behind the cause. Mayor Carolyn Goodman donated land on the corner of Madison Avenue and North Martin Luther King Boulevard for $1 a year. And rest assured, that $1 check will arrive at the mayor’s office on time. Then there are individuals like local philanthropists Phil and Oleksandra Ruffin — our clinic’s namesakes — whose generous support allowed us to complete construction.
Now that the Ruffin Family Clinic has been open a few months, the medical need in our community is as great as we had anticipated. With a small staff overseeing hundreds of volunteers, organization in the face of this increased need is paramount to our future growth. The day-to-day running of a nonprofit medical clinic is extremely challenging, a series of moving parts that need to come together in order for everything to run smoothly.
The Volunteers
Our selfless volunteers are the veritable heartbeat of our clinics. As of January 2016, we have more than 450 pitching in. Roughly 300 are medical professionals: primary care physicians, specialist physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, medical assistants, emergency medical technicians, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, respiratory therapists, social workers and health educators. Our non-medical professionals — ranging from students to retirees — play a vital role in our operations as fundraisers, greeters, front office personnel and eligibility screeners. We ask each volunteer to commit to four hours per month of active service for a minimum of six months.
Most of our physician volunteers take a four-hour shift each month, but many will come in as needed, if their schedule permits. Dr. Robert Shiroff, the vice president of our board of directors, is a cardiologist who practiced for nearly 30 years before retiring in 2006. Every Wednesday afternoon, he makes the rounds at the Ruffin Family Clinic. Like many of our volunteers, he is a retiree with deep ties to our community who is committed to providing the unseen and uninsured of Southern Nevada with excellent medical care.
The number of volunteers allows us to keep our paid staff numbers lean and mean. We will soon have 12 full-time employees and three part-timers, which allows us to reinvest a large majority of our monetary donations into treating patients. During the past fiscal year, we delivered close to $4 million in health care on a budget of approximately $1 million, thanks to our volunteers, community partners and in-kind donors.
The Staff
We have a selfless core of full- and part-time staff members who run the daily operations of our clinics while keeping an eye on long-term fundraising and community development opportunities. Our medical director, Dr. Rebecca Edgeworth, oversees our clinical services. Philanthropy director Shari Bridges writes grant proposals, develops fundraising initiatives and organizes special events such as our annual Volunteers in Medicine Ball.
Volunteer director Lisa Curran is tasked with recruiting potential volunteers and the daunting job of scheduling to ensure that all of our patients receive quality care in a timely fashion. When a physician is scheduled for a shift, Lisa confirms that a nurse is on staff to work with the physician, and in turn, a medical assistant is present to help the nurse. Additionally, a medical scribe is needed to input the patient’s notes into our electronic medical record system. A unit secretary is required to manage the flow of the clinic, so that when a patient checks in, the front desk volunteer informs the unit secretary. At any given time, we have five volunteer physicians on hand, which means 25-30 medical professionals are working in concert to treat our patients.
Our Community Partners
It would be impossible to expand and evolve without the support of our community partners, all of whom support our vision. There are countless medical professionals and organizations that assist us on short notice if a medical situation arises. Quest Diagnostics and Clinical Pathology Laboratories provide lab services for our patients through generous donations. Quest recently contributed a $35,000 grant, while CPL gives us their 10 most-ordered lab tests for a penny a test. West Valley Imaging and Desert Radiology offer imaging services free of charge to our clients, as does all three campuses of St. Rose. Thomas Dermatology and Matt Smith Physical Therapy are just a couple of the many specialists who open their doors to our clients, free of charge.
Whatever the ailment, our only concern is helping the client. We never want to say we don’t provide that service. While we may not offer the service at our clinics, we will find somebody in the community willing to lend a hand.
In December, we announced a partnership with Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada and Dignity Health-St. Rose Dominican on a project that has already paid dividends. Dignity Health-St. Rose Dominican donated an eight-passenger van to transport Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada clients to the Ruffin Family Clinic for medical appointments. The donation included one year’s salary for a medical case manager/driver. This provides Catholic Charities’ clients with immediate medical care, and once they become Volunteers in Medicine patients, we can help facilitate their transfer to long-term providers in the city if they are eligible for Medicaid.
The Challenges
While fundraising is a 365-day-a-year process, our greatest challenge is also our greatest reward. Each patient is unique; everyone who walks through our doors has a different story to tell. We pride ourselves on listening to their stories, identifying challenges and finding ways to help them, whether it’s at our clinics or through one of our community partners. For instance, if a patient undergoes diagnostic tests at one of our clinics and is found to have cancer, our challenge becomes facilitating their future care. It could be through referral providers who do pro bono work or agencies such as the Governor’s Office of Consumer Health Assistance. In some cases, patients are eligible for Medicaid or qualify for heavily discounted health plans through the ACA.
When it comes to treatment, it’s all about collaboration. We need our community partners. A lot of what I do as executive director is cultivate and manage those relationships. It doesn’t take a village — more like a small country — to treat the uninsured.
As our clinic has grown and laws such as the ACA have impacted health care in our country, there has been one constant: Volunteers in Medicine of Southern Nevada has never had a patient shortage. We are the only free, full-time medical clinic in Southern Nevada, and it is always a challenge to reach out and explain what free charitable clinics do and why they are vital cogs in the gears of our community.
The Future
We need to do more as a community to help people who don’t have access to medical treatment. Health care is a right, not a privilege. The local medical community must band together to ensure the people who keep our city going — restaurant, hotel and retail workers — have access to high-quality medical care. Volunteers in Medicine of Southern Nevada has been fortunate that so many amazing benefactors and organizations have stepped up to help, but we are only scratching the surface.
With the opening of the Ruffin Family Clinic, Volunteers in Medicine of Southern Nevada has the capacity to help 10,000 unique patients and up to 25,000 patient visits each year. We are on track for 6,500 to 7,500 patient visits this year with the opening of the Ruffin Family Clinic, so the room for growth is tremendous. Dr. Jameson hopes to one day open a third Southern Nevada clinic because the need in our community for medical care remains urgent. One of Dr. Jameson’s mottos is: “No man, woman or child should die prematurely or go to bed without the medications they need.” We love Southern Nevada and are honored to serve as our community’s medical safety net.
Thanks to our volunteers, community partners, staff and benefactors, we are able fill in the gaps existing in our health-care system. There is still room to do more, and with the expansion of our services at the Ruffin Family Clinic, the future is bright.