BACKGROUND
The free clinic is a health care delivery model that provides primary care and pharmaceutical services exclusively to uninsured patients. Using a multidisciplinary volunteer clinical staff which includes physicians, social workers, dieticians, and osteopathic medical students, St. Luke’s Free Medical Clinic (SLFMC) cares for over 1,700 patients annually in Spartanburg, SC.
OBJECTIVE
This study aims to measure the change, over time, in patient A1c measurements at SLFMC in order to quantify the success of the clinic’s diabetes treatment program.
METHODS
A prospective-retrospective chart review of patients enrolled at St. Luke’s between January 1, 2018, and January 1, 2021 (n=140) was performed. Patients were stratified as having controlled (<7.0 A1c, n=53) or uncontrolled (≥7.0 A1c, n=87) diabetes relative to a therapeutic A1c target of 7.0 recommended by the American Diabetic Association. For both controlled and uncontrolled groups, baseline A1c values were compared to subsequent readings using a Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed rank test. Results from the SLFMC population were compared to published A1c literature from other free clinics.
RESULTS
Patients with uncontrolled diabetes experienced significant reductions in median A1c at both 6 months (p=.006) and 1 year (p=.002) from baseline. Patients with controlled diabetes showed no significant changes. SLFMC’s wholly uninsured patient population showed a population rate of controlled diabetes (42%) that came close to recent national averages for adults with diabetes (51% to 56%) as published by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The clinic’s Hispanic population (n=47) showed the greatest average improvement in A1c from baseline of any ethnic group. Additionally, 61% of SLFMC’s Black population (n=33) achieved an A1c under 7.0 by the end of the study window, which surpassed national averages for glycemic control.
CONCLUSIONS
We present free clinic hemoglobin A1c outcomes obtained through chart review. Uninsured patients treated for diabetes at SLFMC show a reduction in hemoglobin A1c that is comparable to national standards although average A1c levels were higher than national averages. Black and Hispanic populations that are more highly represented in the uninsured pool performed well under SLFMC management. These results represent some of the first in the literature to come from a free clinic that is not affiliated with a major medical school.
Hypertension Management in a Student-Run Free Clinic: Meeting National Standards?