For all appearances, it could have been simply another upscale family medical practice on Main Street in Taylors, but when the 36 patients who came to the two-story, freshly renovated facility on a recent Thursday had received health services and perhaps picked up their prescription in a pharmacy on site, they didn’t pay a penny.
The Taylors Free Medical Clinic is in operation – and, in fact, has been since July 28, already having offered its services to more than 200 different patients. “The clinic is growing faster than we expected,” said a pleased Judy Anderson, the clinic’s executive director.
A faith-based organization, the clinic had its beginnings in the hearts of community leaders who had been actively engaged in international medical missions work for years, primarily through the highly successful Mo-Med ministry of First Baptist Church, Taylors. The clinic’s purpose is to offer primary health care at no cost to the ever-growing number of people with low incomes and no health insurance.
The added value of the health services provided by the clinic is in its ministry “to the whole person” – a guiding philosophy that takes into account the spiritual and emotional, as well as the physical, needs of the patients. Spiritual assistance by volunteers at the clinic – which, on a typical treatment day, include three physicians, four nurses, a chiropractor, and a Christian counselor – is offered when appropriate and when opportunities arise, according to Anderson.
The executive director pointed out that 75 percent of the patients ask for prayer, compared with 7 percent at the outset. She recalled an evening when one of the last patients was leaving the clinic. “As is her routine,” said Anderson, “the check-out volunteer asked the patient if there was anything further we might help her with, and how we might pray for her. She said she had decided to follow Christ as her Lord and Savior and wanted prayer support and nurturing as she began this new and wonderful journey in her life.”
A collection of churches in the area – large to small, white and black – lend support to the clinic. Baptist congregations include Northgate, Locust Hill, Jubilee, Hampton Heights, Aiken Chapel and Taylors First, just down the street from the clinic. Three Methodist churches – St. Mark’s and St. Matthew’s as well as Aldersgate – are involved, as is an independent congregation called The Vine.
The involved churches as well as a number of individuals provide funding for the clinic, which opened after more than two years of planning. The Duke Endowment awarded a grant of $165,000 to the clinic for renovation of its facility, which had been a doctor’s office. Other grants also have come in, Anderson said.
A 16-member board, which formerly served as the steering committee, operates the clinic. Its chairman is Jim Hayes, one of the physician volunteers and a member of Taylors First Baptist.
According to Anderson, the clinic needs more volunteers – from doctors, nurses and counselors to greeters, screeners and translators for the large number of Hispanics who qualify for health services. Patients must wait for three months between visits to the clinic unless there is an ongoing medical need. The clinic, which hopes to add dental services within three years, gives top priority to management of disease, offering special education classes in such areas as diabetes control and heart health. For the convenience of patients, the clinic is on the Greenville Transit Authority’s bus line.
Mention to Anderson that the Taylors clinic is a lot like the typical family medical practice (with a spiritual plus, of course), and she doesn’t mind the comparison. For the increasing number of people coming as patients to the Taylors Free Medical Clinic, the executive director said simply, “We want to be their family doctor.”