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A Guide to National Health Reform for America's Free and Charitable Clinics
The need for free and charitable clinics is not going away as a de facto by-product of health care reform. However, the landscape is changing significantly enough that it will force clinics to understand how the legislation, and resulting implementation, will affect their future role in the health care safety net. Clinic boards and executives need to give careful, concerted, and continuing consideration to the changes that will be occurring around them in the coming months and years. They need to be armed with knowledge, tools, and resources to help them in this process. This guide provides those resources.
This is the nation's first comprehensive manual to aid free/charitable clinics in understanding health care reform and to making informed decisions.
Also, visit the Georgia Free Clinic Network Facebook page
About the Georgia Free Clinic Network
GFCN was founded in 2003. It is the statewide association of free and charitable medical and dental clinics in Georgia. These clinics, which vary in size and scope of services, are each uniquely dedicated to serving many of Georgia’s more than 1.7 million uninsured. Staffed primarily by volunteers, these non-profit organizations reach out to their communities with an unwavering commitment to local populations.
GFCN is the leading “voice” for charity clinics in Georgia. Members can address state public policy needs for free clinics, guide consensus and work through GFCN to can find solutions and advance the work of providing care for the uninsured. The GFCN mission is to “provide a collaborative support system to foster growth and development of charitable clinics and improve access to quality healthcare for the medically underserved across the state.”
There are 104 free/charity clinics in Georgia. Our network of clinics provide a model of how the private sector, and in many cases through the faith-based community, can offer health care to the uninsured at no cost to the taxpayers. The clinics of GFCN provide a safety valve to help take the pressure off the taxpayer-supported system of health care.
Georgia Composite Board of Medical Examiners and the Georgia Board of Dentistry Adopt Rule Changes for Continuing Education Credits for Volunteers
At recent meetings of both the Composite State Board of Medical Examiners and the Georgia Board of Dentistry, the members adopted proposed rule changes for continuing education credits. The Medical Board voted to waive one hour CME requirement for physicians for each four hours of documented work volunteering at a non-profit agency which provides medical services to indigent patients, such as charitable clinics. Physicians may earn up to 10 hrs of CME credits per biennium.
The Dental Board approved up to ten hours of continuing education per biennium. Dentists may receive one hour of CE for every four hours of volunteer work. In order to receive the waiver, the physicians and dentists shall submit to the appropriate Board, the documentation of the work at the time of their license renewal.
