These numbers have faces?

Guest opinion
Jan Ganett

The numbers whirl around us like leaves on a blustery autumn path. Millions, billions, trillions (what IS a trillion, anyway — and what comes next?) 
It’s dizzying. It’s disorienting.
Here are some numbers to consider:
America spends nearly twice as much on delivering health care as other developed nations in the world. In 1965, in the U.S. we spent $206 per capita income for health care expenditures. In 2006, we spent $6,714 per capita.
Japan spends $2,474 per capita in health care expenditures; Germany, $3,371; Canada, $3,678; and the U.S., $6,724 per capita.
And yet — and yet ­— more than 47 million Americans have no health care insurance or are severely underinsured. In Clallam County, more than 8,000 of our neighbors can’t get medical care because they’re not insured and they can’t afford it.
At least half of these neighbors have jobs but no benefits, even though employers provide most of the health insurance in our country today.
What happens to folks who have no health care coverage?  They wait until they have a dire situation, then go to the local hospital emergency room — the most expensive kind of care there is.
While we work through the resolution of our country’s expensive, broken health delivery system, there is a partial solution in our own backyard. A “free clinic” in Sequim serves uninsured and underinsured patients.
Volunteers staff the Dungeness Valley Health & Wellness Clinic, including physicians and other providers who give of their time two evenings a week to provide primary care to patients who have no other options.
Donations from you and your neighbors support it, along with grants and other major gifts. No national or county government supports the clinic; the city of Sequim contributes through the Local Government Initiative Fund. The clinic collects no insurance reimbursement for the patients it sees.
A far-sighted commitment from Olympic Medical Center provides space for the new facility for the clinic at Sequim Medical Plaza, plus support with technology and patient testing. The free clinic is a part of the hospital’s strategic ob-jective to serve nonreimbursed patients in its coverage area.
The DVHWC is a member of a network of about 1,200 free clinics in the U.S., and is one of about 30 in the Washington State Free Clinic Association.
From its beginnings more than seven years ago, the development of the DVHWC has led to a part-time paid clinic director; a move to larger and more efficient facilities last year; the addition of a Chronic Health Care Clinic with a dedicated provider who enables patients with chronic conditions (diabetes, hypertension, etc.) to be seen on an appointment basis weekly; and a new Wellness Program designed to work with you and your neighbors in “getting well and staying well.”
A healthier model reduces health delivery costs and leads to a more productive, more robust community in both lifestyle and economic environment. The clinic’s many volunteers and donors are dedicated to being an active part of a solution for a healthier state and country
Last November, Gov. Chris Gregoire recognized that the Dungeness Valley Health & Wellness Clinic “demonstrates, through pooled voluntary effort of physicians, medical providers, volunteers and donors, its mission of providing health and wellness services to uninsured and underinsured members of the community; provides health and wellness services to the community of Sequim and surrounding areas, which in turn supports Washington state’s ‘Healthiest State’ campaign; stimulates a sense of wellness and vitality and the clinic consistently searches for improved ways of helping others to help themselves in maintaining a lifestyle in a creative process that leads to the health of the larger community.”
If you or a neighbor experience a need for the clinic’s free services, patients are seen Monday and Thursday evenings beginning at 5 p.m.
The free, public Wellness Forums and classes are scheduled on the third Tuesday afternoon of each month on a variety of topics aimed at “moving, breathing, eating” our way to a healthier lifestyle.
Identifying ways we can work together to support our neighbors during shaky times is one of the gifts of living in an idyllic community and gives us a way to feel empowered to make a difference and be part of a solution instead of feeling alone and helpless during times of great change.

Gannett is a board member of DVHWC and co-chair of the Wellness Committee.