Engage Free Clinic News - January 2025
These are our preliminary totals for the month of December and year 2024 (YTD column) When you subtract most of the software and technology costs ($420) which began our electronic upgrades, that leaves our operating costs, as a fully licensed, rural, medical free clinic at right around $5,000 for 2024.
Not bad for a volunteer organization providing primary care (provider visits, labs and prescription medication) to uninsured working families for free. Since 2019, through the pandemic, when volunteers were stretched in their own practices, we have provided 909 primary care appointments, well over 300 lab appointments and 7,217 new and refill prescriptions, all for free. The cost of those services, if we had charged for them, would be in the area of $1,563,654.21. Our expenses to provide those services over that five year period were only around $42,000.
This year (2024), we've cut our costs by 50%, by developing our own new ways of doing things. Starting in 2025, we've just contracted with a new lab processing company, who believes in our mission and will be charging us substantially less for lab services, lowering our 2025 budget even more. We are still negotiating with a pharmacy software company, but they want to help and then our upgrade specifics will be complete and available statewide for other free clinics!
Big thanks to the Butterfield Foundation, The Oklahoma Pharmacy Board, The Oklahoma State Department of Health as well as our supporters, because we have begun purchasing all of the technology that we need to upgrade to our new, cutting-edge free clinic model to multiply our efforts region wide without effecting our operating costs. It is truly a blessing to be the bearer of such great news. We are receiving the benefits of our changes much faster than anticipated. These tablets (in the picture) now hold ALL of the clinic functions not only making us highly mobile but also equipped with the latest tech (electronic health records pictured) and connects us with each other as well as any participating physician even in the most remote areas. It is already a huge success! 
Of course, there are four big reasons behind our success. The first is God! He enables us to serve, equips us for the job and then engages on our behalf providing us a path to follow as he leads us to serve our community.
The second is our volunteer staff. I cannot say enough. We couldn't do anything without them. Watching them come together to heal bodies and hearts for free because of their love for people never gets old. 2024 had some bumps in the road for Engage, but what our people do keeps me volunteering also.
The third is our churches and individuals who support us with prayers and finances. They provide much of our operating costs because they understand the value in what we do and support us in providing the area our services.
Fourth is the local businesses who want to give back and provide us with money, services and volunteers to make a difference. They help us to be good stewards of every dollar we do spend.
Together, in 2025, through the Engage Association, we are going to impact Oklahoma statewide. There are several new free clinics in development as well as several established free clinics considering or already wanting to join us by association to connect via our new technology model or/and use our new statewide mail order free pharmacy coming online in 2025. It's an exciting time. There is a lot of news to be shared over the next 6 months.
But I wanted to show you where we've been, this month. This was a year of change. It could have been problematic. It had its moments. Opening clinics, coming up with a whole new business model and keeping a struggling operation going during the process is going to have problems. But we now have an efficient, rural free health clinic with all of the technology we need and we are becoming poised to be a leader in rural free clinic care next year and as a result, we will help more working families for less and sharing the Gospel as we do our part to help our neighbors. Thank you for all of your prayers, money and other support in 2024!
if you want to help us get a jump on our expenses for 2025, you can securely do that BY CLICKING HERE!
Or, look around, and even inquire about receiving services, BY CLICKING HERE!
Frank Kelly, Executive Director
Engage Free Clinics
Engage Oklahoma
