Dominion gives $500,000 to 40 medical providers in Va.

Fan Free Clinic executive director John Baumann (right) tours Va. First Lady Anne Holton and Dominion CEO Thomas Farrell II (left) through the clinic on June 2, 2009.

By: Michael Martz | Richmond Times-Dispatch
Published: June 03, 2009

James Woody found the perfect metaphor for a $15,000 check to the quartet of health-care centers he operates for people with little or no insurance in the Richmond area.

"It's a shot in the arm," said Woody, chief operating officer of the Capital Area Health Network.

The network, based in Richmond's Church Hill neighborhood, was among 40 clinics and medical centers in Virginia to receive more than $500,000 in donations yesterday from Dominion Resources Inc. and its employees. The company gave up an annual company-sponsored outing at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg to help nonprofit medical providers that provide free or reduced-cost care.

In the Richmond area, 12 clinics and centers received $115,000 from the Richmond-based utility company, which gave a total of $1 million to clinics and centers in 14 states.

"It's a very healthy way to express your sympathy with what's going on in the larger economy," Virginia first lady Anne Holton told Dominion Chairman, President and CEO Thomas F. Farrell II yesterday as he greeted her at the Fan Free Clinic in Richmond.

Holton and Farrell took a brief tour of the free clinic, which has been operating for almost 40 years, talking to its staff and patient Veda Ayles, who has no insurance to pay for medical care.

"I have work, but no benefits," said Ayles, a 61-year-old South Richmond resident who works as a church secretary after being laid off by a home-health-care company several years ago. "You need benefits."

Ayles is typical of patients seen regularly at the Fan Free Clinic and an intertwined network of other providers. Almost three out of every four people served by free clinics and subsidized medical centers work full time, and an additional 15 percent have part-time jobs, said L.M. "Lou" Markwith, executive director of the Virginia Association of Free Clinics.

Increasingly those people have been laid off from white-collar and blue-collar jobs, Markwith said. "Clinics are seeing a new demographic in their waiting rooms."

The Fan Free Clinic is seeing more people than ever who rely on them for routine preventive care. "We're becoming a medical home for people," said John Baumann, the clinic's executive director.

His clinic employs a half-time medical director and a full-time nurse practitioner, but it also calls upon as many as 40 volunteer doctors, as well as a network of more than 600 doctors through the Richmond Academy of Medicine's Access Now program. Every dollar of aid leverages $5.40 of care, according to providers.

"This is really just the center of a whole network of free services," said Holton, a former juvenile court judge and legal aid advocate who used to refer clients to the Fan Free Clinic for medical care.

Holton praised Dominion for its contributions, especially the lack of strings attached to how the money is spent.

"Nonprofits," she asked, "don't you love unrestricted gifts?"

Contact Michael Martz at (804) 649-6964 or mmartz@timesdispatch.com.