MCR Health Services will help patients after free Manatee RAM clinic
MANATEE -- After the massive Remote Area Medical free clinic comes to Manatee Technical College at 6305 State Road 70 E., Bradenton, beginning 6 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, a Manatee County medical organization will offer free follow-up care.
MCR Health Services, formerly Manatee County Rural Health, will step into the role of follow-up provider, a top MCR official confirmed Wednesday.
"For anyone who needs follow-up care in the next few weeks the answer is: 'Yes,'" said Dr. Bill Colgate, senior vice president of quality and accreditation at MCR Health Services.
He said the follow-up care will be free with a caveat.
"The only caveat is that we are a federally qualified health center and, because of that, we have to do a means assessment on every person, which determines what kind of sharing of costs we expect," Colgate said. "It's a sliding fee scale. But they are all seen regardless if they pay. It's really semantics. The answer is 'yes.'"
MCR Health Services has 14 health centers in Manatee County and if someone makes an appointment or walks into one, they must fill out an application asking for basic personal information, job description and income, Colgate said.
"For starters, if they are sick, we will skip the application right then and get them help," Colgate said. "Regardless of that application, they will still be seen that day,"
The application must eventually be filled out because MCR must follow certain federal policy and procedure.
"But at no time are they turned away," Colgate said. "If you can't give us your sliding scale, you are still seen. They are all seen without exception."
Colgate said one of the reasons MCR changed its name is to defeat a perception the organization isn't accessible.
"To all of these patients, to our citizens who haven't accessed our services, that is why we changed our branding and ramped up our marketing," Colgate said. "We want to get the word out that we want to take care of the community."
Dr. Richard Conard, event chairman of the RAM event, said MCR Health Services must operate under certain guidelines so it can't simply give people free medical services.
"This is an organization run by Mickey Presha, who took it over in 1984 and put in place in our community, the most sophisticated infrastructure for primary care," Conard said. "He is the largest federally qualified health center in the southeastern United States and he has restrictions the federal government puts on him as to how he must operate."
Colgate said he took Stan Brock, founder of RAM, on a tour of MCR Health Services centers and Brock was impressed Manatee County had such a place. It's not the case in most places RAM went, Colgate said.
"There would be nothing better for us than to make RAM not necessary here," Colgate said.
Colgate said MCR could have duplicated the services RAM will provide this weekend, but not at the same scale.
"We would not have been able to handle 700 dental patients," Colgate said.
In other RAM developments:
About 400 containers of orange juice donated by Tropicana for RAM were delivered Wednesday to Manatee Technical College.
The Manatee County Sheriff's Office attended a meeting Wednesday afternoon at Manatee Technical College to finalize security plans for RAM.
The first RAM patients are expected to arrive around midnight Friday, said Lori Dengler, head of RAM volunteers.
The 2,000-square-foot Cantrell Hall at MTC will be turned into RAM on Friday morning to ready for the patients about 24 hours later, Conard said.
Richard Dymond, Herald reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7072 or contact him via Twitter@RichardDymond.
This story was originally published November 18, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "MCR Health Services will help patients after free Manatee RAM clinic ."