Improving Health and Improving Lives

The Conway Interfaith Clinic is a 501c3 nonprofit organization beginning operations in October 2003, provides medical and dental services for Faulkner County individuals and families who do not have insurance. Or clients are primarily the working uninsured. The Conway Interfaith Clinic concentrates on three specific areas: heatlh services for the uninsured, patent assistance pharmaceutical support and dental services for children with ARKids and low income adults.

In late 2001, a group of concerned citizens from First United Methodist Church in Conway began to meet to discuss the healthcare situation in Faulkner County. This small group started meeting regularly and expanded to include members of other churches and the ommunity. After two years of intensive research and planning including visits to established clinics, CIC opened in October 2003. When planning for the Clinic began 12% of the people in Faulkner County had no health insurance, currenlty that number has risen to 20%. 1 in 5 residents in Falukner County have no health insurance.

Since the Clinic's inception increasing access to dental care for children and low income adults has been our primary focus. Along with dental care, we do dental screenings in the schools in the county to make children and their parents aware of their dental health. The dental care is provided four days per week 10 hours per day. We have provided dental care to over 7,000 patients since 2003.

The medical program treats the unisnured residents of Faulkner coutny. The Medical program began seeing patients 1/2 a day a week and has expanded to three days a week. Dr. Bart Throneberry is the medical director and we have three APN's working under his supervision. A Podiatrist and Dermatologist volunteer their time 1/2 a day each month to assist our patients in these areas. Currently we have provided services to over 1700 patients with approximately 6,500 visits.

Effective health care requires medication to complement medical visits. The Patient Assistance Pharmaceutical Program (PAP) provides maintenance medications to clinic patients. We have been able to provide over $3.5 million of medication to our patients.

The clinic is currently housed in a double wide manufactured building and we are hoping to expand in the near future and be able to provide more health education programs. An electronic medical records system would benefit us to help us improve the care and increase the number of patients would could treat, but due to the cost of a larger server and the software, we are in search of funding.

We have received donations from MicroSoft including server software, office, publisher on several occasions as the clinic has expanded. We currently run a server with medical software, dental software and patient assistance software along with others. We would not have been able to run this clinic without this support and we have not been financially able to afford these without MicroSoft's assistance. The donations we have received have helped us to provide quality care, keep records and provide educational material for patients, and information to our donors.