Spilled Jar of Coins

10-year-old Collects Coins for Coughs

by Friends of Mountain HopeNewsworthy

A 10-year-old boy has collected $182.44 from his school class to donate as Coins for Coughs to Mountain Hope Good Shepherd Clinic.

Mark James Howard of Kodak is part of 4-H. He is the service chairman for his club, which comprises Mrs. Benson’s fourth grade class at Catlettsburg Elementary School.  The class has 21 students.

Glenn Turner of the University of Tennessee’s Extension Service gives students ideas of service projects that could be done. 4-H clubs are supposed to do a different service project each month. One idea was a dental hygiene drive for the Clinic. This is a popular idea as Mountain Hope is always in need of toothpaste, brushes and other dental supplies.

However, after consulting with Mountain Hope medical staff, Ashley Burnette, director of the Clinic’s fundraising arm, suggested that cough drops and cough syrup would be more fitting in January. Mark James asked the school for permission, but the school didn’t want to ask the students to bring in medicines. Instead, Mark James chose to do a Coins for Coughs fund drive and the Clinic would buy the cough medications with the proceeds.

Mrs. Benson supported the project and Mark James made up a flyer to hand out to all the kids. His classmates brought in coins and donated what was left from their concessions money.

“This was such a super project,” Burnette said. “We appreciate Mark James’s commitment to this project, and to the support that we get from Sevier County’s school 4-H clubs.”

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What Does Your Donation Buy?

by Fundraisers

Donate to Mountain Hope Good Shepherd CliniWhen you make a donation to Mountain Hope Good Shepherd Clinic, your money goes a long way. In fact, it goes a lot farther than what you spend on your own health care.

Here’s what we charge our patients. Some of them can’t afford even these prices:

Thirty dollars buys one office visit, a tooth extraction, or baseline blood work. (One of our staff members noted that her insurance billed $661 for the same blood work.)

An echocardiogram (EKG) costs $20 at the Clinic.

If we have them in stock, we charge $5 for common medications such as routine antibiotics.

A dental filling is $60, and teeth cleaning $50.

These low prices are the result of careful management. Many of our medical and dental providers are volunteers (though all are skilled and experienced).

Nevertheless, the actual cost of each visit is much more than the prices we charge. Every time a patient walks in, the cost to us is $94.42, not the $30 we charge. We have to make up that $64.42 deficit through fund raising, grants — and, of course, donations.