Dr. Kelly Rodney Arnold comparesClinica Medicosto Doctors Without Borders—the organization that goes on medical missions around the world.
"I commonly joke with my friends that we don’t need airfare to do the work that we’re doing here," she says. "We have found and identified mission work to be done in an urban landscape."
Serving Chattanooga's growing Hispanic population, the clinic's staff all speak Spanish and English. Many of the clinic’s patients are struggling just to make ends meet. Dr. Arnold says about sixty-five percent of them are uninsured.
"You can see the struggle in their faces," she says. "And we are willing to work with them. So we have fixed pricing. But at the same time, we do a large amount of charitable care, in that most of the services we provide here are fifty to sixty percent of what is nationally charged."
Dr. Arnold founded the clinic, which opened about five months ago. Already, it has a lot to offer: a clinical laboratory, an onsite pharmacy, even an ultrasound machine. But it turns out Clinica Medicos is still under construction. The building used to be an old warehouse, and there are plans for a large, unfinished section in the back. They may add dental services, or optometry services.
They're expanding out front, as well. Outside, near the entrance, they've started building a playground.
"That's one of our goals," Dr. Arnold says, "along with all of the other visions we have of looking not only like a medical practice, but a community home. That's really what we want to be here, and we think that the health of this population symbolizes community health as well."
In this feature segment, Dr. Arnold explains why she founded Clinica Medicos.