Windfall gives clinics new hope

The money from an antitrust settlement will go toward new equipment, medication and provide a salary for an administrator who hasn't been paid in two years.

By KYLA K. WILSON

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 15, 2000

The administrator at the Greenwood Community Health Resources Center will soon start getting a paycheck for all the work she does there, and the Clearwater Free Clinic will be able to purchase medical equipment.

Both developments are among the results of a settlement this week in an antitrust case filed by the U.S. Justice Department against Morton Plant and Mease hospitals.

Greenwood Community Health Resource Center will receive $150,000, and Homeless Emergency Project Inc. -- better known as Everybody's Tabernacle -- and the Clearwater Free Clinic will each receive $75,000. The three groups were chosen because they are in Morton Plant's service area.

The U.S. Department of Justice charged Morton Plant Mease Health Care with violating a federal antitrust agreement. The hospital group settled by agreeing to pay $300,000 in a civil penalty to the non-profit health groups. It also paid a $500,000 fine.

The founder of Greenwood Community Health Resource Center, Willa Carson, said the money will allow her to serve more people. She'll start, she said, by paying the administrator who runs the clinic a salary.

"I don't pay her because I can't afford it," Carson said. "I've been praying for years to find some way to pay her."

Glemma McCray, 59, of Clearwater, has been the clinic's administrator for three years. When she first started she was getting paid but decided she didn't want a salary in order to help the clinic. She has not been paid in the past two years. She is looking forward to a small salary.

"It's kind of like having your cake and eating it too," McCray said.

Carson said she'll also use the money to buy a computer, some decent furniture for the clinic and medical supplies. The money will help out in the clinic's new building that is being built on Greenwood and Palm Bluff. It is scheduled to open in October.

"When it's free and you're living by grants, there always a shortage. I can't say Clearwater hasn't been good to us, but this will certainly come in very handy," Carson said.

The president of the board of directors for the Clearwater Free Clinic, Connie Stafford, said some of the money will be used to buy diabetes equipment.

"We are totally dependent on grants and donations. We are obviously thrilled to be receiving the money," Stafford said. "Now we are able to look at equipment we have been dreaming about purchasing."

Stafford said the clinic had been having difficulty buying equipment because money from private donations is usually restricted to purchasing medication. The settlement gives the clinic freedom to expand several programs and buy supplies needed for its growing number of patients.

"More people are ending up with no insurance. That leaves more patients for us," Stafford said. "We never have enough. It will be nice to enlarge the population that we serve."

A representative of Everybody's Tabernacle declined comment.

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