Healthcare for all!!

Question: How has the location of Mud Creek Clinic in Appalachia shaped the development of the clinic?

Before we start to focus on how location affected the different aspects of Mud Creek Clinic’s development, we must know how the clinic began and has grown into what it is today. Mud Creek Clinic is a medical clinic in Kentucky that was founded in 1973 by Eula Hall. Eula’s clinic served not only as a place for medical services but also a place where clothing and food were distributed. People would also come to the clinic to work with Eula to try and earn black lung disability benefits.

Eula began the clinic with a little over a thousand dollars and within a year the clinic had grown enough that it had be moved to Eula’s house. Sadly, the clinic was burned downed by an arsonist in June of 1982, but of course this didn’t stop Eula Hall. She raised money and was also given some money from the ARC to build a new clinic which opened in 1984. The Mud Creek Clinic became part of Big Sandy Health Care in 1974 which also included Hope Family Medical Center. Today Big Sandy Health Care includes seven different clinics and has over 100 employees. It’s pretty amazing to think of the progress that Eula and her clinic have made over the last 40 years. If you look at the timeline that I made you can see the major milestones for both Mud Creek Clinic and the non-profit organization.

This clinic was created by Eula so that people of all incomes were able to receive the health care that they needed. The clinic’s location in Eastern Kentucky allowed it to do exactly that, as shown by the statistic that about 19 percent of Kentucky is below the poverty line (talkpoverty.org). Unlike the way many health clinics are designed, the Mud Creek Clinic used a sliding scale fee, which would make the clinic accessible for the poor. Although this is how Eula wanted the clinic to be run, it made it difficult to buy the needed equipment when the clinic’s income was so limited.

Eula Hall targeted her clinic towards people that were uninsured, so that they weren’t paying outrageous prices that they couldn’t afford for their health care. Compared to the rest of the country Kentucky has a very high rate of people that are uninsured at about 20 percent before the Affordable Care Act was passed (talkpoverty.org). This correlates with the high poverty rates and the clinic charging lower rates or nothing for a patient to see a doctor. Another aspect to consider with people that are uninsured is that they are less likely to come in for annual checkups and they are more likely to delay getting the medical attention that they need. This becomes a problem because when uninsured people do come in to a medical clinic it is likely that their medical condition has worsened and will need more extensive treatment than necessary.

Appalachia is one of the centers of the mining industry which has direct correlation with the overwhelmingly high number of black lung cases that are seen. Eula Hall also has a strong stance in supporting the miners with black lung, so many would come to her for medical care and help with fighting for disability money. These two factors combined have brought many people with black lung to the clinic and it is very costly to treat and test people with this disease. Having people that may be too poor to pay anything for their black lung treatment could definitely then take a toll on the expenses of the clinic.

In conclusion although people who are impoverished, people who are uninsured, and people with health defects from mining can be found anywhere, they are issues that are often found in combination for many people in Appalachia. Mud Creek Clinic handling all of these issues on a very small budget, especially before federal funding, has definitely played a huge roll in how this clinic has developed.

References:

Baldwin, Fred. “A Conversation on Rural Health Care.” ARC, https://www.arc.gov/magazine/articles.asp?ARTICLE_ID=99. Accessed 23 April 2018.

Behringer, Bruce, and Gilbert Friedell. “Appalachia: Where Place Matters in Health.” Preventing Chronic Disease, vol. 3, no. 3, 2006.

Estep, Bill. “She ‘Fought like Hell’ to Change Health Care in Appalachia. At 90, She’s Still Fighting.” Kentucky, Lexington Herald Leader, 3 Jan. 2018, http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article192761569.html

Care, Sandy Health. “ .” Big Sandy Health Care, Inc., www.bshc.org/ (Links to an external site.).

Kilborn , Peter. “In Coal Country, a Home-Grown Clinic.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Mar. 1991, www.nytimes.com/1991/03/15/us/in-coal-country-a-home-grown-clinic.html (Links to an external site.).

“Access to Health Services.” Healthy People. U.S. Department of Human and Health Services, https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/Access-to-Health-Services Accessed 24 April 2018.

“Poverty Rates in Kentucky in 2015.” talkpoverty, https://talkpoverty.org/state-year-report/kentucky-2015-report/.

Read Write Think. http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/timeline_2/. Accessed 27 April 2018.

Kratzer, Nate. “Kentucky Shows What Can Happen When a Poor, Conservative State Expands Medicaid.” Talk Poverty, 8 September 2014, https://talkpoverty.org/2014/09/08/kentucky-state-medicaid/. Accessed on 27 April 2018.