Appropriately Community Health Improvement Week coincides with the second anniversary of the KennyBurkett Clinic located in LaGrange County. In 2010, Parkview LaGrange Hospital’s Community Health Improvement Program helped to launch a free clinic for the people of LaGrange County who are without health insurance. Beginning with a grant of $2500, two laptop computers, and some donated medical office equipment and furnishings, the hospital helped the KennyBurkett Clinic open for its first patients in June 2010.
Since then, Parkview LaGrange Hospital and Lisa Booth, MD; Rhonda Sharp; MD; and Eric Borden, MD – who practice with Parkview Physicians Group -- along with several other physicians from the hospital’s medical staff, have donated their time to assure that those in need of basic medical services have access to services without travelling outside of the county. With support from Parkview LaGrange Hospital, the clinic provides basic primary healthcare, treatment for chronic health issues, simple laboratory tests, referrals for diagnostic tests and community social services, and limited specialist referrals. Clinic patients in need of medicines may qualify for financial assistance from Parkview LaGrange Hospital’s Medication Assistance Program (MAP).
In the two years since it opened, the KennyBurkett Clinic has responded to nearly 1,000 visits from patients needing services who would otherwise have gone without treatment. And since January 1, 2010, Parkview LaGrange Hospital’s MAP program has provided $15,575 in emergency medication vouchers to uninsured and underinsured patients of LaGrange County to enable them to receive the medicines they need. An additional 289 uninsured or underinsured patients have received assistance from the hospital’s MAP counselor in working with the pharmaceutical companies to determine whether they qualify to have the charges for their maintenance medications lessened or waived. As a result, the drug companies have waived more than $705,000 in maintenance medication fees for these patients during this two year period.
More Information
The KennyBurkett Clinic is located at 102 B West Michigan Street in LaGrange. Office hours are Thursdays, from 5 – 8 p.m. Patients are seen on a first-come, first-served basis. For additional information, call (260) 463-2703.
For more information about the Parkview LaGrange Hospital’s MAP program, patients may call (260) 463-9280 or email
plhmap@parkview.com.