A New Era of Volunteerism
One physician can make good things happen

The Dallas County Medical Society soon will enter a new era of volunteerism. We have long had areas throughout the Metroplex where physicians have volunteered their services. Our local physicians travel the world on medical missions to treat people with ailments that otherwise would be left untreated. Some of our retired physicians have opted for volunteer work instead of hitting the links.

Still, many more physicians feel "called" to such service, but don't know where to go or how to get started. To meet the need of our member physicians to help the indigent communities, DCMS formed a community service committee. One of its charges is to match volunteer physicians with clinics in need of medical assistance to treat their patrons.

One such clinic was formed by my partner, Allan R. deVilleneuve, MD. For years he had been giving up his day off to work in the Head Start program. A school nurse, Carla Bateman, RN, approached him with a growing problem she had identified. In the affluent suburb of Plano, many indigent children either had no health care or had inadequate health care. The school nurses saw this every day. Somehow, these children were slipping through the cracks. These were low-income families, most of them Spanish speaking.

In late 1991, Dr deVilleneuve and Ms Bateman opened the Plano Children's Medical Clinic in a small house owned by the First Baptist Church of Plano. The clinic is open two nights a week with volunteer physicians, nurse practitioners, physician's assistants, nurses, clerical help, pharmacists, and translators. Since 1991 the clinic has provided more than 35,000 checkups and sick-patient visits, 30,000 vaccinations, and more than $3 million of free care. Many people who do not work at the clinic provide other services. Physicians, psychologists, sociologists, podiatrists, opticians, speech therapists, and others accept pro bono referrals in their offices. One lab company donates lab work. The effect in the community is that children receive their immunizations, school absenteeism is reduced because of early intervention, and parents' work absenteeism is reduced because the clinic is open at night. The volunteers feel good about the work they are doing. The patients are getting excellent care. A problem is being solved. Plano Children's Medical Clinic recently moved into its new building that also has a classroom for parenting classes, nutrition classes, new mother classes, and special needs classes. You can read more about the clinic in this month's Health Allies.

I salute Dr deVilleneuve. He is a testimonial to the fact that one physician with a vision can make good things happen. And, it gives me hope that with enough Dr deVilleneuves out there, another DCMS program, in its formative stages, will accomplish the ideal goal of treating every Dallasite who falls through the healthcare cracks.

This volunteer program is called "Project Access Partnership." It takes what the Plano Children's Medical Clinic and other community health centers are doing on a broader scale. This project will partner physicians with the faith community, Parkland Health & Hospital System, the hospital community, and the business community to begin a pilot program that has the potential to be the largest volunteer program in the country and will go a long way to begin to care for uninsured patients in this community. It works simply by commiting to see a certain number of patients in the program each year. That's it. You don't go anywhere; the patients come to you. Obviously, the more physicians who participate in this program, the less of a burden it becomes on any one physician. But it takes only one physician to make good things happen. Be one of those physicians.

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