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Clinic’s Medical Director Loves Meeting Patients

img dr dew044Since 2003, Dr. Richard Dew has volunteered his medical skills to the patients of Mountain Hope Good Shepherd Clinic. “I still look forward to coming here every week,” he says.

“I just love medicine,” says the longtime physician. “I look on it as a calling rather than a job.” Working at the Clinic is a ministry for him. “Here I feel like you’re helping folks who really need help and can’t get it anywhere else.”

As the Clinic’s medical director, he sees a full patient load one day a week and can be reached by phone for advice if needed at other times. He is responsible for maintaining the Clinic’s high quality of medicine. He works with less experienced staff members and the many medical students who visit the Clinic. He loves to teach and sees it as a way of impacting the future of medicine.

Listening to patients and getting to know them over time and building relationships with them is an aspect he enjoys. Then there’s the joy of making a rare diagnosis. For example, he recently diagnosed a case of rheumatic fever, though it had been 50 years since he last came across it.

He earned his medical degree at the University of Tennessee School of Medicine and did his residency in family practice. He was a U.S. Navy medical officer in Vietnam, then practiced medicine in Oak Ridge for 30 years. During that time he started the first hospitalist program in Tennessee at Methodist Medical Center.

He has plenty of interests beyond medicine. He is the author of three published books and is hard at work on his fourth. He heads a support group for families of children who have died. He enjoys hiking, cultivates wildflowers at his Gatlinburg home and with his wife, Jean, follows University of Tennessee men’s basketball.

Doctor and patient handshake with medical equipment on the background.

Free Physicals Event to take place July 20 & 21

This is an excellent opportunity for those who live or work in Sevier County but have no health insurance to become established patients at Mountain Hope. Once patients are established, it is much easier getting into the Clinic for primary health and dental care visits as needed. Free physicals are BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.

Summer 2016 Health Fair Flyer in English (1)Summer 2016 Health Fair Flyer in Spanish (1)

An illustration of the Zika Virus, which symptoms include mild headaches, maculopapular rash, fever, malaise, conjunctivitis, and arthralgia.

No Need to Panic over Zika Virus

Stinging MosquitoZika virus is all over the news, but it’s not all over your backyard.

“If you’re not pregnant, it’s not a problem,” said Dr. Richard Dew, Mountain Hope Good Shepherd Clinic’s medical director.

The mosquito-borne Zika virus can cause serious birth defects, including microcephaly (an abnormally small brain). It can also cause flu-like symptoms that are so mild they do not require a visit to the doctor. In some cases, you may not even know you have it.

As of June 15, in the continental United States, there have been no locally acquired mosquito-borne cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control’s web site. There have been a few hundred Zika cases in the United States, the vast majority of them related to travel outside the States. Tennessee shows between 3 and 6 reported cases of Zika, according to the web site.

Zika is “not a whole lot different from most other viruses,” said Dr. Dew. Most efforts are aimed at protecting pregnant women. “The main thing is, don’t get bitten by mosquitoes if you’re a woman of childbearing years.”

That means taking common-sense precautions against the pesky insects and not going to the Olympic Games in Brazil if you are pregnant or planning to become pregnant.

Mosquitoes, not just the Zika-carrying Aedes mosquito, may carry viruses such as West Nile anyway, so it’s wise for everyone to take protective action. The Environmental Protection Agency suggests the following:

  • Wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants.
  • Stay in places with air conditioning and window and door screens to keep mosquitoes outside.
  • Sleep under a mosquito bed net if you are outside and are not able to protect yourself from mosquito bites.
  • Use EPA-approved insect repellents.

Mosquitoes like to breed near or in standing water. Their life cycle (from egg to larva to pupa to adult) can take as little as four days. Make it a habit of regularly pouring off standing water in containers, changing bird bath water and spraying areas of water such as puddles that can’t be drained.

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Dental Area Gets a Makeover

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Mountain Hope Dental Unit Before Renovation

Mountain Hope Clinic’s dental area is getting a sparkling new look, thanks to hard-working volunteers from a local bank and a grant from a dental insurance company.

Laurie Sullivan and six co-workers from BB&T rolled up their sleeves when the Clinic closed for the evening one Tuesday. They pulled off baseboards and set to work painting the rooms and corridor that comprise the dental area. Four of them returned the next day to add another coat of paint. By that Thursday, the rooms were back in use.

“This is the third year in a row we’ve been working for Mountain Hope,” said Laurie, who is the captain of BB&T’s Lighthouse Project. Employees in BB&T bank branches can choose their own projects, which are then approved and funded by the bank. Sevier County branches chose the Clinic and Sevier County Food Ministries for their projects this year.

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Mountain Hope Dental Unit After Renovation

Not only did the bank employees wield paintbrushes, they also donated an examination table and a urinalysis machine. Medical Assistant Teresa Large is particularly pleased with the new machine. “This machine’s easier to use and faster,” she said.  A grant from Delta Dental’s Smile 180 Foundation is paying for the dental area renovation, which will also include much-needed new flooring. “Our clients in the community use the Clinic,” said Allison Hall, another of the BB&T painters. “We just helped kick (the renovation) off.”

In past years BB&T employees have supported the Clinic in several ways. Two years ago they donated a scanner that is being used to move the Clinic from paper to electronic records. Last year they donated a large, powerful shredder.

“The BB&T employees’ work on the dental area renovation will improve our dental patients’ experience,” said Ashley Burnette, the Clinic’s director of fund development. “We really appreciate everything that they have done for us.”

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What Does Your Donation Buy?

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.