MedsHelp, Free Clinic to combine forces
Lynchburg News and Advance
Monday, June 21, 2004A merger is under way between two nonprofit groups that help low-income patients get prescription drugs. MedsHelp and the Free Clinic of Central Virginia are combining forces to provide a single site for pharmacy assistance for many low-income people.
The merger will take place over a span of four months, beginning July 1. And, by September or October, MedsHelp will move from the Johnson Health Center on Federal Street into the Free Clinic on Main Street.
The MedsHelp board voted Tuesday for the merger. The Free Clinic board approved it last week.
About 1,200 MedsHelp clients will be affected.
Although the merger decision was a bittersweet one, “the realities of our situation made it not so difficult,” said Dr. James Wright, a Lynchburg physician, a member of the MedsHelp board and among those who founded the agency that opened in January 2002.
The downturn in the economy affected income from donors, particularly those who give out of investment incomes, he said.
One fear both boards share is that the financial donor pool - many who have faithfully given to both organizations - will cut back on the amounts when donating to one.
“The key is that just because the organizations are merged doesn’t decrease the need,” said Robert Barlow, Free Clinic Executive director.
The four-month time period of the merger is planned to assure that all MedsHelp patients are contacted.
MedsHelp grew out of an Interfaith Outreach Association community pharmacy program that began more than a decade ago. It eventually grew beyond Interfaith’s ability to provide the service, and a Pharmacy Access Coalition of many community agencies worked on developing MedsHelp.
The Free Clinic of Central Virginia, founded in the 1980s, also provides medications but targets its services to the uninsured, most often people who work in jobs without health benefits.
Barlow said the merger makes it possible to streamline the MedsHelp effort to provide prescription drugs.
“Their costs were heavy in the administrative area,” said Barlow. “They’re a smaller organization than us in terms of total budget. They needed a way to reduce administrative overhead by combining with a larger organization.”
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