"This Was a Wonderful Place"
Many patients coming to the Moss Free Clinic Monday learned for the first time it's closed. Where its 3,000 patients - more than 400 of them uninsured - will get care and medications is unknown.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Adele
The woman stood quietly outside the Moss Free Clinic on Monday morning, gripping her walker.
Behind her, the sliding glass doors were locked. Next to her, her niece, who had brought her to the clinic for an appointment, was on the phone with her daughter, trying to explain what none of them knew until this morning—that the clinic was closed, permanently, and would not be opening.
“We are still in shock,” the niece told the Advance. “We don’t know where to go now. She has been getting all her care here for four years.”
The Moss Free Clinic closed its doors last week. A press release that went out last week stated simply the clinic was “ceasing operations.”
“The Clinic is working with area health systems and health care providers to ensure continuity of care for current patients,” the rest of the press release stated. “The Clinic is also assisting staff in the search for comparable employment opportunities. The Board of Directors and the staff would like to extend their heartfelt thanks to the community for their support over the past 30 years.”
The clinic was providing care to about 3,000 patients as of last week, staff said. Of those, about 435 were completely uninsured.
Some patients had heard word of the closure, but hoped it was just a rumor.
“It’s true,” said a patient in Spanish, as she returned to her car, to another man and woman who arrived at the clinic.
The man, who said he’d been coming to the Moss Clinic for two years, teared up as he spoke about the kind of care he received there.
“It is very sad,” he said, through a translator. “The clinic has helped us too much. They do too much for us.”
A Recent History of Financial Difficulties
The clinic has previously faced financial difficulties, which became public in February of last year. Funding for operating expenses raised during a capital campaign conducted in 2004 by the Mary Washington Hospital Foundation ran out and the hospital stopped providing in-kind support.
In January, new executive director Thomas Brashears told the Advance that the clinic had a goal of raising $1 million per year to meet operating expenses. However, he said that the clinic was not closed and did not intend to close.
As of Monday afternoon, the clinic’s website had not been updated with news of the closure.
Future of Care Unknown
None of the patients the Advance spoke with had any idea where they would go for their medical care.
Eric Fletcher, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Mary Washington Healthcare, said in an email that a hotline (540-741-1141) has been set up “for former Moss Free Clinic patients to call to get assistance with new appointments.”
“We have talked with the other free and charitable clinics in the area and most are taking new patients,” Fletcher said. “MWHC is also able to take new patients at our Family Medicine GME Clinic. So far, a few dozen patients have called and we have been able to help them secure appointments. Our community’s safety net does have the capacity to care for the former Moss Clinic patients.”
Fletcher continued to say that Moss Clinic staff will have two opportunities this week to meet with the MWHC human resources team about “potential job opportunities” with the hospital system.
Rebecca Butler, vice president of communications, marketing, and development with the Virginia Association of Free and Charitable Clinics, said the Moss Clinic’s closure is “sad news indeed.”
“As we are all well aware, the demand for accessible healthcare has only grown for many in the greater Fredericksburg area and we are very concerned to see a safety net clinic have to close its doors knowing the impact it will have on the overall health of its community,” Butler wrote in an email.
Dental Services and Pharmacy Open - For Now
The Moss Clinic’s dental facility, which provides services through a partnership with the Germanna Community College dental program, is still open.
The clinic’s pharmacy will remain open for 30 days—through July 10—to fill prescriptions for the 435 uninsured Moss Clinic patients, and for the 14 other free clinics across the state for which the Moss Clinic is the central fill location.
On Monday, pharmacy staff members—including longtime pharmacists Charles Haun and Abigail Kopp, who been at the clinic for 13 and 14 years, respectively—were hard at work filling prescriptions and answering patient questions.
Leanna Epps, a pharmacy technician who is in charge of patient assistance, was contacting drug companies, informing them to send prescriptions directly to patients instead of to the pharmacy.
“And we hope they aren’t porch-pirated,” she said.
Kopp said that some former staff members volunteered to work on Monday to meet patient needs. She said “the hope” is that staff will continue to volunteer for the next four weeks.
“Not one person in the building will be getting paid to be there,” Kopp said.
Regardless of how many staff volunteer, Kopp said that pharmacy manager Myhanh Do will make sure the pharmacy is open daily until July 10.
The High Cost of Medications a Concern
Kopp said she worries about where patients will get their medications once the pharmacy closes and about how much it will cost them. She said that more than 60% of Moss Clinic patients are type II diabetics and that many of them have been prescribed GLP medications, such as Trulicity, which are the first-line therapies for patients with additional risk factors and those for who can’t tolerate metformin.
A one-month supply of Trulicity, with a GoodRx coupon, costs about $1,000.
“We asked $5 for a one-month supply or $10 for a three-month supply,” Kopp said. “But if a patient does not have that, they walk away with their medications, no questions asked.”
She said the pharmacy also had a pay-it-forward box. Patients would add a few dollars to it when they could, and other patients could use that money to pay for their own prescriptions.
“It turned out to be a great idea,” Kopp said. “The community was so generous, and I have witnessed on many occasions patients paying for complete stranger’s prescriptions. It was truly unreal.”
One pharmacy patient told the Advance that she takes four medications and that she will have to take one of them for the rest of her life. She said one of the medications would cost her $500 in another pharmacy.
“The costs are sky-high,” she said. “I just got in here as a patient 30 days ago, based on my income. I can’t afford it otherwise.”
The woman said that now, she’ll have to choose between paying for that medication or paying for other basic needs, “and I’d rather pay my rent and feed my kids than stay on the medication.”
“This closure hurts the whole community,” she continued.
Another woman was waiting at the pharmacy to refill her prescription for a cancer treatment medication.
“I have 10 pills left, and I need to take a pill every day for four years,” she said. The woman said she had several exams scheduled at the clinic, including a CT scan to check the status of her breast cancer.
“I don’t know what I can do now,” she said. “It’s good here. They have helped me through.”
Quality Care - Gone
That sentiment about the quality of care received at the Moss Clinic was echoed by every person the Advance spoke to.
“They have been really good to me here,” a patient of 15 years said. “They are kind people. This place comes in handy for everyone.”
A former patient told the Advance that the clinic was there for her when she was in the process of leaving an abusive relationship.
“I was on my own with a small child,” she said. “I had been a stay-at-home mom, and I hadn’t worked in a while and didn’t have any prospect of working.”
Both she and her son received medical care at the Moss Clinic for two years until she was able to get into a better situation.
“I don’t know what I would have done without them,” the woman said. “I was dog sick [with chronic sinus infections] and had no place to go. It would have been expensive and difficult with a small child to go to the emergency room, so I would have gone without [care] … and it’s very sad now that there will be people going without.”
At the clinic on Monday morning, one woman came in to find out whether news of the closure was true, because “I just don’t believe it.”
“This is a wonderful place,” she said.
Outside, the woman’s husband was waiting for her in the driver’s seat of a van.
“Tell me they’re not closing!” the man said to the Advance. “I’m a cancer survivor and a disabled veteran. I need these guys.”
He was quiet for a beat, and then said, “God’s got us. We going to make it.”
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