Virginia Association of Free and Charitable Clinics

Our organization supports and advocates for the free and charitable clinics across Virginia. We aspire to help meet the current and future resource, technical, business and operational demands of member clinics. We are an active leader and participant in promoting relationships that will enhance the growth of member clinics. We also promote best practice models of standards of care in member clinics to ensure a consistent high quality of health care. Through our support of the clinics, we want to see improved capacity to provide greater access to quality health care for the Commonwealth's low-income, uninsured and underinsured residents.

Virginia’s free and charitable clinics have a long history of providing much needed quality healthcare to Virginia’s low-income, uninsured populations – and providing that care with compassion, dignity and respect. By delivering important preventative and chronic care, Virginia’s free and charitable clinics help patients remain healthy, reduce unnecessary visits to the emergency room, and avoid missed time from work due to illness.

Our organization is using 4 strategies to meet these goals:
a. Work to increase funding and resources to the free and charitable clinics. This means researching and sharing information with the clinics about health care reform and the Affordable Care Act. We will also encourage the clinics to diversify their funding base. As the fiscal agent with the General Assembly on behalf of the clinics, we will continue to pursue funding in Virginia's annual budget.
b. Represent our members' interests with all key stakeholders. This means proactively engaging in healthcare policy at both the state and federal levels. We also support implementation of health care reform and the health insurance exchanges.
c. Improve access to health care. This means working with the clinics to expand services in the areas of mental health, dental and pharmacies.
d. Promote and support consistent high quality care. This means developing a standardized definition of Quality and uses outcomes to measure and report results.

Our organization is capable of achieving these strategies through these methods:
a. We received grant funding to engage an expert facilitator and conduct regional trainings. The focus of these trainings is on resource development and outcome measurement. We have also created a staff position of Director of Development.
b. We participated in coalitions with organizations with similar strategic direction. We have also worked with the Department of Medical Assistance in Virginia on Medicaid acceptance for clinics that may transition post health care reform.
c. We conducted regional trainings on outcome measurement and use for funding for the clinics. We also continue to seek out funding to support the expansion of services provided by the clinics.
d. We worked closely with Rx Partnership and the Virginia Health Care Foundation to find new resources for obtaining medications for free clinic patients.

The landscape of health care is constantly changing in both Virginia and our country. Our organization is going to have to continue to support the clinics as the Affordable Care Act moves through its stages of implementation. According to the Congressional Budget Office, there may be as many as 29 million people, including documented, undocumented and those who are eligible for Medicaid but reside in states that are not going to expand this program, who are still without access to health insurance. In the upcoming months and years, doctors, hospitals, navigators, states, clinics and patients will be addressing the needs of the underserved with respect to affordability, accessibility and portability of primary, specialty, dental care and medication access. Our organization and our member clinics intend on being part of the solution.