A Report from our Medical Director

Joan Bowes Ritter, MDDespite the changes in health care since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, AFC continues to see numerous new faces each month at our lotteries and is receiving more referrals from Virginia Hospital Center and local shelters than ever before. The demand for our services continues to greatly exceed our capacity, and we anticipate the need to remain high for the foreseeable future. Consistently innovating and striving for excellence, AFC continues to look for ways to better serve our patients; to efficiently collaborate with partners to provide the best care at the lowest cost to our community; and to reach out to the medically underserved.

Celebrating Community Partnerships

Arlington Free Clinic is fortunate to be able to work with a network of enthusiastic and engaged safety-net partners. Our strong partnership with Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC), for example, allows us to bring additional resources to our patients. We began screening our patients for food insecurity, and as we uncover need we are able to refer patients to AFAC for supplemental groceries. AFAC has also come to AFC during evening clinic sessions to provide cooking demonstrations for patients, highlighting ways for incorporating affordable, healthy ingredients into meals – complementing our already robust schedule of wellness activities.

In addition to ensuring that AFC patients have access to healthy food and nutrition education, this partnership also allows us to educate AFAC clients about the services available at AFC. AFC staff has attended AFAC food distributions to share information about becoming a patient, as well as referrals for free mammograms and breast health education. We are working to strengthen our relationships with other organizations like Shirlington Employment and Education Center (SEEC) and Arlington Street People’s Assistance Network (A-SPAN) to provide all the services our patients need and to ensure that the Arlington residents most in need of a medical home find one here at AFC.

Addressing Emergency Care

AFC is in the process of looking more carefully at our patients who visit the Emergency Room at Virginia Hospital Center (VHC) for urgent care. Our goal is to keep patients out of costly emergency rooms that only address immediate problems and leave larger health issues unresolved. Even though our patients have a medical home at AFC, there can be a large degree of education involved in increasing the ability of patients to manage their own health and make appropriate decisions about when and where to seek care. Once we have better data on who is using the ER and why, we are hopeful that we will be able to meet some of these urgent needs here at AFC. Additionally, we are trying to improve the communication with VHC to provide the necessary and timely follow up care for our patients seen there for true emergencies or scheduled surgeries and procedures.

Medication Compliance

A critical factor in caring for patients is ensuring medication compliance, as medication errors can be a significant source of morbidity and mortality in healthcare. We are working to identify a process for ensuring that both the members of AFC’s health care team and our patients have an accurate and accessible list of medications being taken. Providing our patients with an easily understood list of medications – as well as instructions in how to correctly take them – is complicated by language barriers and literacy issues.

We’re striving to understand and overcome challenges related to medication compliance in order to optimize our pharmacy program’s effectiveness. More than 60% of our patients suffer from one or more serious health conditions including diabetes, hypertension or cancer. AFC’s pharmacy provides medications that help decrease the risk of life-threatening medical events such as heart attack or stroke. Affordable access to needed medications in conjunction with information on how to take them properly allows patients to make the most of the care they receive at AFC.

Thank you for continuing to support the mission of Arlington Free Clinic.

Read more articles from our spring newsletter: