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| Culmore Clinic staff served the public outdoors for a short period last month before social distancing requirements were put in place. |
Patients make an appointment for a phone call with a healthcare provider. The clinic has nurses who speak Spanish and Arabic, and there are also volunteer interpreters. The next step will be videoconferencing with patients.
The Culmore Clinic continues to provide routine medical care for things like high blood pressure and diabetes but temporarily suspended its work with specialists. It is housed in the First Christian Church in Seven Corners and serves lower-income adults in the Culmore area.
Many of the clinic’s clients have lost their jobs due to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
“Patients are really fearful and stressed out,” says Terry O’Hara Lavoie, co-founder and former executive director of the Culmore Clinic. “There are lots of concerns about the stigma of having COVID-19.”
As a result, the clinic bringing back its counseling services, says current Executive Director Anne-Lise Quinn.
So far, four Culmore Clinic patients have tested positive for COVID-19 and one is in a hospital intensive care unit. Another nine are suspected of having COVID-19 and are self-quarantined at home. That is twice as many from the previous week.
The clinic doesn’t do COVID-19 testing. If the healthcare providers suspect a patient has the virus, they send them to an Inova Respiratory Clinic that conducts drive-through testing.
“When we have suspected or confirmed COVID-19 cases, we don’t know how many other people in the household may be impacted,” Quinn says.
Because many of the people served by the clinic live in overcrowded conditions, it’s hard to keep patients isolated.
Volunteers from the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center deliver food, and diapers and formula if needed, to households with coronavirus patients.
Related story: Culmore Clinic relocates and expands
The Culmore Clinic started preparing for coronavirus the first week of March. Staff spent about a week seeing patients on site in the parking lot, then went switched to telemedicine on March 17, Lavoie says.
Clinic personnel advise the Fairfax County Health Department of suspected cases so the county can know where the hotspots are.
When anyone calls for routine medical issues, clinic staff ask about COVID-19 symptoms and make sure everyone in the household knows what the symptoms are.
Every Friday, staff picks up free medications from NOVAScriptsCentral, the clinic’s longtime partner, which is waiving its $5 fee. The clinic also gets support from the Breaking Barriers Fund to pay for medications not available from NOVA ScriptCentral.
“With COVID-19, that fund is stretched,” says Lavoie, “so we’re paying a lot more for medications.”
And because telemedicine visits take longer, the Culmore Clinic added a third day for serving the community. That meant staff are working more hours, adding to the clinic’s costs.
As a result, there’s a greater need for donations from the community. If you can help, click here.
“We’re continuing to serve our patients. We’re doing what we always do,” Lavoie says. “We’re leveraging community resources to serve the whole patient.”