For anyone interested in eating a delicious meal and fellowshipping with family and friends, all while providing a very real benefit to neighbors in desperate need of medical care, the Community Helping Place’s 17th annual Tomato Sandwich Supper is the perfect event.
On Thursday, July 18 meals consisting of a delicious BLT sandwich, chips and a homemade dessert may be purchased for dine-in or take-out from one of three participating local churches: Dahlonega Baptist, Dahlonega Methodist and St. Luke Catholic Church.
Afterwards, from 6:30-8:00 p.m., participants can head on over to Hancock Park in downtown Dahlonega for family fun and live music from popular local band Clique Bait.
Tickets for the supper are $12 per person or $35 per family, and can be purchased in advance online at communityhelpingplace.org, or at the door. This annual fundraiser is important because, unlike the other CHP fundraisers, 100 percent of the money raised will go directly to support their free clinic.
“The Gold Party kind of gets divided up between all the programs, but the Tomato Supper is specifically for the clinic, like the [Grocery] Grand Prix was for the food pantry,” explained Clinic Director Erin Cook.
“We raised around $60,000 last year, and we’re hoping to meet or exceed that this year,” added Dental Coordinator Linda Sanchez.
VOLUNTEER NETWORK
Other than Cook and Sanchez, all of the staff of the free clinic donate their time for free.
“We’re just so proud of all our volunteers,” Sanchez said.
“We have volunteer providers, nurse practitioners, medical doctors and a volunteer dentist and dental hygienist,” Cook added.
She said the volunteer medical professionals are either retired or serve on their day off, and come in from once a month to several times a month.
Sanchez noted that the part-time status of the volunteers does not diminish the quality of care that patients receive in any way.
“That’s what’s good about the volunteers, the doctors, they follow-up and make sure the patients do come so they don’t just fall through the cracks,” she said.
EXPANDING OPERATIONS
Cook and Sanchez said that any money raised for the clinic, whether through private donations and grants or fundraising activities, is money well spent in the community.
Cook said over the last year the CHP Clinic has provided approximately $1.5 million worth of medical services, $1.5 million in free medicine and $250,000 in dental services for the uninsured in Lumpkin County.
Sanchez pointed out that the dental portion of the clinic just celebrated its one-year anniversary on June 15, and demand for dental services has steadily grown over that period.
“As it started picking up we started growing and started seeing more patients for it, more need for dental in the community,” Sanchez said.
Cook agreed.
“We get phone calls every day about dental. You know, medical is put on the back-burner, [but] dental is not even thought about usually with the low-income population,” she said.
Thanks to a grant from Opportunity Lumpkin, a “Healthier Georgia” initiative, the clinic has also recently expanded operations to include mobile medical services for residents without reliable transportation.
“We’re focusing on mobile medical, and that’s when we take our bus out into the community where people might not be able to get out and we're doing assessments and getting them signed up for the clinic, and then we have transportation to bring them here. So we’ll have myself and medical personnel go on our mobile medical events to assess patients and get them signed up,” Cook explained.
Recently the mobile medical unit has set up shop at sites on Oak Grove Road and Turner’s Corner to help get the word out about the resources available, conduct blood pressure tests and assist with questions about medications.
TANGIBLE BENEFITS
When asked about the importance of the services provided by the free clinic, Sanchez said the biggest impact is reducing emergency room visits by keeping chronic diseases like high pressure, asthma and diabetes under control.
“A lot of times health care for any kind of self-care is put on the back-burner when someone is worried about paying rent or buying groceries or making a mortgage, and so we are here to help those people,” Cook added. “What we’d like to reiterate is we’re a medical primary care clinic, not an urgent care or a walk-in clinic, but we focus on getting you healthy by coming to the doctor every six months or so, or more often if you need medicine.”
She said that the ridiculously high cost of medicine is often what keeps people from seeking medical treatment in the first place. As examples she cited insulin, which costs $3,000, and a three-month treatment for Hepatitis-C that totals $90,000.
Cook said that giving patients access to these types of critical medicines and treatments can be “life-changing.”
“By law, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals any place that gets federal funding has to then return some of that product into the indigent population, which means our patients get financial assistance through Northeast Georgia, Northside Forsyth, so that they can see specialists. And that’s also how we get medicine, because the pharmaceutical companies have to return their product to indigent patients,” she explained.
On the dental side, Cook said CHP sometimes offers specialty clinics on a Friday or Saturday, as needed.
“I think the last dental clinic [Dr. Randy Otis] saw 14 or 15 [patients], so every 15 minutes,” Sanchez recalled. “Everyone kind of gets together and knocks it all out.”
“It’s quite something,” Cook agreed. “I have a medical background, so teeth are not my [specialty]. But I’ve sat in there and watched Dr. Otis work, and it’s pretty incredible.”
COMMUNITY SERVICE
Cook said that in order to qualify for treatment, patients must be currently uninsured. However, if someone has medical insurance but no dental insurance they can still be seen for dental services.
She said she is always blown away by the number of first-time inquiries the clinic still receives.
“It amazes me that people don’t know about our clinic in this community. It amazes me every day that people say ‘We have a free clinic in Dahlonega?’”
Regular office hours for the CHP Medical and Dental Clinic are Mondays through Thursdays, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.