Maggie McKay (host): What happens when you need quality healthcare but you can't afford health insurance? Where do you go? Let's find out with Tina DeGroot, advanced practice nurse at Stoughton Health.

Welcome to Stoughton Health Talk. I'm Maggie McKay. Thank you so much for being here today. I'm interested to find out more about this neighborhood free health clinic for uninsured adults. First off, who does the clinic serve?

Tina DeGroot: Well, thank you, Maggie, for having me today. Our clinic serves adults 18 and over who do not have any health insurance or who are underinsured in the nine surrounding rural areas surrounding Stoughton.

Host: And who's eligible for services?

Tina DeGroot: That's a really good question and has changed over the years, especially with COVID. So right now, because we are grant funded, the patients that we see are adults who are either uninsured, as I had said previously, or who are maybe underinsured. We saw a lot of healthcare insurance changes through COVID and with the different federal regulations. So, some families are paying up to $20,000 for their healthcare deductible. And while they have health insurance, they can't afford the deductible. So, we also welcome them into our clinic.

Host: Twenty thousand. Is that for an entire family or one person?

Tina DeGroot: That's for an entire family.

Host: Wow, still.

Tina DeGroot: I know, it's very expensive.

Host: that's a lot. What services are provided?

Tina DeGroot: Well, right now, through our history, we primarily cover three different categories of services. The first is primary medical care, where someone can come in just as you would come in to a regular clinic and see a primary care provider. We focus on chronic health management. We focus on immunizations or preventative care, whatever the patient may need medically.

The second kind of arm of our program is that we do offer counseling services. We offer individual counseling services, family counseling services, couples counseling services. And then, the third arm of our program is we offer a wide variety of different spiritual help for our patients. We work with the different pastors and priests in their surrounding communities, as well as some non-traditional medicine folks that we work with. And we really try to meet our patients spiritually where they're at and try to help them find providers that maybe meet with their needs and how they define spirituality.

Host: Wow, it sounds like Stoughton has thought of everything and covered everybody's needs. That's awesome. So, tell us about the care providers there. What are their credentials?

Tina DeGroot: Oh, sure. So, we have three physicians that work for us. We have two internal medicine physicians and one primary care physician. We have three advanced practice providers, myself as a clinical nurse specialist, Leah as a PA, and Roxanne as a nurse practitioner. We all work full time jobs pretty much. And then, we tend to volunteer our time when it fits our schedules. But we have a fantastic healthcare team for providers right now. We also have a few registered nurses that work with us, help room our patients, and really get to know our patients. We often find out the nurses and the staff find out more about our patients than we do. And we also have a wide variety of different types of students that come through our clinic to help volunteer.

Host: Do people need to make an appointment to come in? What's the process for that?

Tina DeGroot: So, our normal process is we appreciate if people can make an appointment, because that way we know how many providers we need to have on a given clinic day. However, it's very common that we have at least one to three to four walk-ins during our clinic time, and everyone is welcome.

Host: So if someone would like to volunteer their time or donate money to support the clinic, how does that work?

Tina DeGroot: Oh, donation of time, out in our Facebook page, we have some ads that talk about volunteering. So, you can either go to our Facebook page or Instagram page, or you can call the clinic at our number at 608-205-0505, and our clinic director would be glad to give you some information about the volunteer positions that we have. And also, really a lot of our volunteers come from word of mouth. So, people have come in and helped us out maybe for six months or a year and then their needs change and they kind of pass the torch on to friends and family that are interested in volunteering. So, we rely a lot on word of mouth, but you certainly can contact us in those multiple different ways.

Host: How old do you need to be to volunteer?

Tina DeGroot: We say right now 18. However, we have put together a program with the Stoughton High School that looks at bringing in senior high school students, teaching them how to do blood pressure and cardiovascular primary prevention out in the community. So, we train those high school students and then they can also come and volunteer at our clinic, whether that's in a secretarial role, answering the phone, filing papers or working one on one with our patients to get some experience in the medical field.

Host: That's a great opportunity, not only to get experience, but also service hours, you know, when you're applying to colleges.

Tina DeGroot: Absolutely.

Host: So, you mentioned it was grant-funded. How does that work? And you also take outside donations, of course, but when you're grant funded, do you have to reapply every year or what?

Tina DeGroot: Yes, we are just about 100% grant-funded and it really means a couple things in our clinic. Two of our primary donors are the Bryant Foundation. And then also, we are supported by Stoughton Health and the hospital. So all of the diagnostics, whether that's lab work or an x-ray or maybe a mammogram, Stoughton Health does write that off as their community service, as well as they also help us secure pharmacological or medicines for our patients. So if our patients live in Stoughton, a part of that grant is that they will pay for $1,000 of medications for our patients for a lifetime if you live in the Stoughton area.

We also apply for numerous external grants, whether that's through the National Association of Free and Charitable or some medical Department of Health and Human Services grants. The Stoughton Area Resource Team has been just amazing at giving us grants as we move throughout the years. And to answer your original question, Maggie, yes, we have to apply every year. So, we tend to keep very good records on all of the great work that we do, because that's the type of data that everybody's looking for and to be able to support our mission, vision and values.

Host: Definitely. This has been such useful information, Dr. DeGroot. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Tina DeGroot: I think that what I would like to add is just to let everybody know that we are here. If you are in need of physical, mental or spiritual health, that the people that you're going to meet in our clinic are fantastic and we're here if you need us.

Host: Thank you so much for filling us in on this.

Tina DeGroot: Thank you for having me.

Host: That's Tina DeGroot. To find out more, go to stoughtonhealth.com. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out our entire podcast library for topics of interest to you. I'm Maggie McKay. Thank you for listening to Stoughton Health Talk, a podcast from Stoughton Health.