MW: Our budget for 2002 is $1.2 million. Over the last few years, it was $350,000 in 1999, $650,000 in 2000 and $900,000 in 2001. Right now we’re having a campaign to raise $9 million to start an endowment fund. We started that campaign in May and we already have $2 million dollars.

MW: There’s about 17 in this country. There is a clinic open and running in Bucks County that was modeled after us. Another one in State College, Pa. is trying to get up and running.

MW: We serve the uninsured working poor: husbands between jobs, waitresses, bus drivers, college students, college graduates, nannies, daycare workers, landscapers—the people who are around us every day. Many of these people are working part-time and are not offered insurance. They have nothing to pay for their medicines. I didn’t realize it myself until I started working here. There are 45,000 people that have no health insurance in Chester County, and it’s a wealthy county. We see probably about ten percent of them, about 600 visits per month. In 2001, we had approximately 8,500 patient visits, for which 1/3 were for the dental clinic. The year before we had 5,000 patient visits. This year, we predict our patient visits to be 12,000.

These are the patient eligibility requirements: they have to live or work in Chester County and be without health insurance. Their gross income must be below the 200 percent poverty level. For example, for a family of two it would be $23,220. If you’re born in this country, you qualify for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). If you’re over 65, you get Medicare. But there’s a lot of people in the middle who fall through the cracks.

MW: Exactly, and that’s not a good answer. First of all, the cost of medicine is much greater when you go to the emergency room. Number two, it clogs up facilities that are needed for true emergencies. After our clinic started, the three local hospitals—Paoli Hospital, Brandywine Hospital and Chester County Hospital—had a decrease in their level I and level II ER visits, even though the total number of emergency room visits had increased. So we think we’re hopefully making a difference in keeping the not-so-sick people out of the emergency room and the really sick people in the emergency room.

MW: We provide primary medical and dental services. From the medical standpoint, I do all the things I used to do in the family practice office I came from, which is taking care of the newborn on up. Physical exams, gynecological exams, acute care visits. Everything from ear infections to chronic medical problems like hypertension and diabetes. We have 165 volunteers, 16 of whom are physicians. We have two or three gynecologists who volunteer for gynecology clinic every two weeks. Once a month I have an orthopedic physician who comes and we try to do consults in-house as much as we can. We have a dermatologist who comes every two weeks. We have podiatry residents who come once a month. We have an ear, nose and throat doctor who comes once a month. I have a wonderful internal medicine doctor who runs our diabetic clinic and has become our endocrinology consultant. The dental service is mostly primary care dental—teeth cleaning, x-rays and some minor dental procedures. I have physical therapists who come here every two weeks, as well as dieticians and diabetic educators. There are only eight people that are paid a salary. I’m the only full-time physician.

MW: Most physicians commit to half a day, either every other week, every week, twice a week or once a month. It varies. I try to take their talents, their interests, their energies. If they can only give me once a month, that’s fine. We’re happy.

MW: I was raised Irish and, since I was old enough to remember, my parents told me when we would eat dinner that you must never forget the poor and hungry because we’re Irish and we were poor and hungry just a few generations ago. Since I was a little kid I wanted to do this kind of work, help the poor. My grandparents were very poor and would be at this clinic. My grandfather had all sorts of jobs: he was the garbage man, the doorman, the iceman. My grandmother worked in a shirt factory. So, when I take care of these folks, it’s like taking care of them. But you know how it is with loans. I had to be in private practice 14 years before I could pay them all off and be able to do the work that I’ve always wanted to do. I’m really blessed and so psyched to be here. I enjoy seeing patients again. I can spend as much time as I want with a patient, which as we know is not the way it is in private practice. If a physician wants to get back to just loving patients and doing what they love to do, this is a great place to volunteer.

MW: October 8th of last year.

MW: Yes. It was hard to give up. I loved the patients I took care of. I liked the people I worked with. But right now, like I said, this is the work I always dreamed about doing and I’m now doing it. And also, I’m not on call and don’t carry a beeper, which is something which actually works with my life right now because I have three children under 12.

MW: I think everyone has a different reason. They want to reach out to people who are less fortunate. All the specialists tell me, "I love coming because I just retired and I can still practice medicine a little bit. I can spend as much time as I want. Just like the old days." We all get out of it more than we give, it seems.

MW: I would say that most are people who just retired in the last two or three years. The average age could be about 60 to 70. We have a woman in her forties who teaches family practice residents. We have a physician in his forties who is vice president of Siemens, does all their medical work, and just wants to keep his hands in patient care, so he comes here once a week for a half a day and sees patients. He’s also helping us set up some computer systems for mammograms.

MW: It definitely makes it more difficult to get a physician who’s still in practice to volunteer. Your free time keeps getting squeezed as you have to see more and more patients. When you finally had some time off you don’t want to see more patients. So, most of the people we’re getting are just retiring and wanting to help us. But people are retiring early too, right? They’re leaving medicine earlier than they should because of the way medicine is. So we might get a few of them a little younger.

MW: Right now we do, but I see that’s probably growing now, so we could always use more volunteers. I’m sure we can fill them up with people who need to be seen. What we probably will always need more of is family practice, internal medicine and primary care physicians.