Engage Free Clinic News - October 2024
I hope this finds you well! I thank you for being interested in our mission. There is a lot of news as we continue to implement our totally new clinic model. As you know, the need for what we do became large post-pandemic and bringing in a new way of using telemedicine designed for rural clinics took a lot of planning, but as we expand our free clinics from one to four, we are discovering the planning is paying great dividends!
We are in the process of opening our Engage Holdenville Clinic and things look awesome. Big thanks to Daryn Kirkpatrick and Kayla Jarrett and their staff at the Hughes County health Clinic for assisting us by letting us use their clinic free of charge on Thursday evenings twice a month! It allows our volunteers to dedicate more donated funds towards patient care and helps us keep treatment free! As a matter of fact, come by and see us Monday evening as we hold our grand opening ...MONDAY OCT 28TH Come and Go Reception from 6-7:30. Official dedication will be at 6:30. The address is
Hughes County Health Dept
200 McDougal Dr Holdenville, OK 74848
Our clinic upgrades, that we are doing simultaneously across our whole operation is going better than planned, although we are needing to change pharmacy software companies to accomplish our new mail order prescription delivery. We had planned for that possibility though, so we were prepared. We will use November and December to do training while keeping our old stuff to make it easier. The pharmacy software change gives a chance to switch from a national corporation to a regional one that has an interest in our area because it's also theirs. Hopefully a great deal for everyone can be worked out. I'll have specifics next month.
As we enter an implementation phase, we will start planning the rest of our expansions, which will include Chandler, Seminole and then Prague in 2025-26.
The other thing we will now begin is the way we run the operations we have, mainly around personnel. We will begin to bring other volunteers on. But that also involves cleaning up the way we run to become more responsible and consistent. The pandemic scrambled people and policies and organization became difficult. So, as we prepare to grow, we need better organization again to handle growth again. To do this, we have streamlined the website, developed some new communication methods and are finding new people to volunteer with administration. Within the next few months, I feel that we will have that also in a streamlined method made for rural style free clinics to emulate easily.
Our vision is definitely striking a chord with others. We are being featured more and more in media publications, who recognize the effort of free clinic volunteers all over. These are snippets from the Holdenville News, Baptist Messenger and Shawnee Outlook
You can view the Baptist Messenger Article Here
View and subscribe digitally to the Holdenville News Here (local supporter of Engage)
The Pandemic Era was devastating to all medical people...free clinics with volunteers especially so. But some wonderful things also came out of it. Telemedicine technology became a new accepted option and among other things, gave us a whole new way to meet needs and a better way to treat more people. It is exciting to see all of our peoples work begin to show dividends.
Economic costs have also hampered a lot of our local community givers. Consider helping to make up the difference. $18-$25 can treat a patient for 1 month, which is pennies on the dollar when you consider we provide hundereds of thousands of dollars worth of medical services for free. YOU CAN GIVE A FAST SECURE DONATION HERE
Pray for our volunteers. Pray for our mission. Thank you for all of your support the last five years. We wouldn't be here without you!
Frank Kelly, Executive Director
Engage Free Medical Clinics
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