vision Quest

“If they’re not healthy, they’re not working”

In 2013, Chester Hart Jr. retired from a long career in healthcare administration. Or so he thought.

“In 2016, I had a calling to come here and apply,” says Mr. Hart, who was a senior executive with Sentara Healthcare when he retired. “Then I had the honor to join this committed team that’s dedicated to serving our neighbors.” The team operates Western Tidewater Free Clinic in Suffolk; he is its Executive Director.

Mr. Hart, also a member of the EVMS Board of Visitors, learned what the rest of his staff already knew: the clinic’s mission is contagious. Pamela Witt, RN, BSN, served as a volunteer nurse when the clinic opened in 2007; she’s now Director of Clinical Services. April Foster, DO (Family and Community Medicine Residency ’14), MPH, rotated through the clinic during her EVMS residency; she was its most recent Medical Director.

“I was given the privilege of serving this community,” Dr. Foster says. “The medical and social issues of these patients are vast, but this clinic stands as a source of light for them. I loved serving this population. But without the relationship between the clinic and EVMS, I would not have been in this position.”

In fact, an EVMS relationship helped establish the clinic. Teresa Babineau, MD (MD ’90), a former faculty member who lived in Suffolk, collaborated with a few other healthcare professionals to bring a free clinic to Western Tidewater, then one of only two Virginia localities without the service.

EVMS remains involved by having Family Medicine residents, MD students and now Physician Assistant students rotate through the clinic under the supervision of Keith Claussen, DO, Assistant Professor of Family and Community Medicine. Since 2011, Obici Healthcare Foundation has funded this training program, formally known as “EVMS Continuity of Care for Western Tidewater.” In January, the foundation also began funding two half-days of care at the clinic each month by health providers from EVMS Endocrinology.

As the clinic nears its 10-year anniversary, the need keeps growing. From starting with two-and-a-half paid staff members, the clinic now employs 23. Volunteers have donated in excess of 102,000 hours.

More than 4,000 patients have received care in over 100,000 visits. Eighty-one percent of patients are older than 40; 58 percent earn an annual income of $24,250 or less for a family of four.

“Our clinic is the community’s only safety-net provider for these patients,” Mr. Hart says. “More than one-third of them are the working poor. If they’re not healthy, they’re not working.”