Jim Burt, medical director of and volunteer at Volunteers in Medicine, is discouraged by the national health care crisis. But for Burt, a Jacksonville native who is very familiar with the Downtown area, the local community’s health care crisis bothers him even more.
“We desperately need a system that covers everyone and that cuts costs,” Burt says. “I think the country owes its citizens adequate care.”
Burt has spent his entire career in the medical field here in Jacksonville. His medical roots can be traced back to McIver Urological Clinic in Riverside, where he worked for 27 years.
Throughout his career in Jacksonville, Burt’s seen troubling scenarios and countless disheartened patients.
“Regularly in my practice, I run into people without health care,” Burt says. “They’re working, low income people who don’t have insurance and they’re suffering but don’t have access.”
After seeing the same negative health care issues in the community, Burt decided he’d had enough. Hence the creation of VIM.
The organization officially opened in Septembe, 2003 and has been helping the community ever since. The clinic provides care at no cost for qualified patients. Visits, medications prescribed and lab tests are all free. Sound too good to be true? Fortunately, for the citizens in need in our community, it’s not.
VIM is able to provide these free services through one key component — volunteers. In fact, everyone who works at VIM is a volunteer. All of VIM’s physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses and even office personnel, donate their time and services free of charge.
“It’s gratifying to see so many people who do have a heart,” he says. “We need a big dose of that for our community.”
Burt says most patients he sees at VIM are working people between the ages of 21-55. He says the clinic hardly ever sees a patient over 60, and that young patients such as children are a rarity as well.
Even after giving treatment and contributing to their wellness, at times, the patient’s problems don’t completely stop after they walk out of VIM’s doors.
“Even after we see people, some of them may need secondary care and it can be difficult to do that,” Burt says. “It’s a shame because we’re not fully providing for the core of our community.”
But Burt gains some peace knowing that though secondary care can be an issue, the offering of basic primary care will at least bring more essential coverage to a Jacksonville community in need.
“When you deal with people who have never in their lives had any type of health care and then all of a sudden they do, you know you’ve done something good,” he says.