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A rural health clinic affiliated with Clemson University on Thursday celebrated the grand opening and ribbon cutting of a location in Orangeburg.
Clemson Rural Health’s new Clemson Health Clinic in Orangeburg is located at 1181 Hutto St.
The clinic is near MUSC Health Orangeburg in the former office of Orangeburg gynecologist Dr. Susan Connor and next to Hutto’s Seafood. The clinic will provide primary, acute and preventive care to patients.
“The largest focus of the clinic is to provide wraparound services for individuals at risk for or living with diabetes,” Clemson University Director of Communications Alex Brooks said. “Nurse practitioners, dietitians and community health workers engage telehealth services, mobile clinics, individual and group health coaching, remote patient monitoring, and produce prescription programs to provide innovative interventions on the cutting edge of diabetes management.”
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The clinic, which actually began local services Jan. 9, is operational Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Clemson Health Clinic at Orangeburg is the hub of local operations but will serve the entire region to include Orangeburg, Bamberg, Barnwell, and Calhoun counties, said Brooks. Conversations are ongoing to expand the reach to Allendale and Hampton counties from the Orangeburg hub clinic as well.
“This is a big day for us,” Clemson Rural Health Director Dr. Ron Gimbel told those gathered for the ribbon-cutting and grand opening. “This is an entire community but not just one community but an entire region.”
“When we come into these communities and these regions, we are trying to do several things,” Gimbel said. “One is to close gaps in care. We really want to focus on things that result in people dying and have a premature death rate.”
“”The second thing we like to do is keep people out of the hospital,” Gimbel said. “If it is not necessary to go to the hospital and you can work on some of these things in advance, that is a lot better.”
He also said the clinic wants to ensure people have a good quality of life.
The clinic will be led by nurse practitioner Donna Atkinson, a certified diabetes care and education specialist in the region.
The clinic has seven exam rooms, two counseling rooms, a lab and three offices.
The clinic will have two mobile health units that will visit local counties at least once a week and provide services to the community.
The physical clinic and the mobile health units will have a total of about eight staff members.
Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, expressed her appreciation that Clemson Rural Health has chosen Orangeburg to open a clinic.
“We talk about access to care,” Cobb-Hunter said. “I am very passionate about care and access to care in rural South Carolina.”
“With this rural health program from Clemson, we are going to be able in collaboration, coordination and partnership with a number of people and programs that are already here, expand and make sure whether you live in Calhoun County, Orangeburg, Bamberg, Barnwell and later Colleton and Hampton, all the counties in the Lowcountry, we want to make sure you have access to care.”
“The way to success in rural South Carolina is to pool resources to work together not in silos and so what we want to make sure that all of us understand that we have a piece of the puzzle, we have a role to play, and we are all going to play it together,” Cobb-Hunter said.
South Carolina Office of Rural Health Executive Director Dr. Graham Adams said the key to rural health care is sustainability.
“All of you in rural communities have seen well-intentioned programs come and go that may be helpful for a little while — two or three years — but not helpful in the long run and can really disrupt systems of care if not sustained,” Adams said. “One of the things we love to see is really folks that are committed to being in these communities, committed to working with other providers and other stakeholders in this community and really do this work long term.”
The Orangeburg location is specifically an effort by Clemson to bring care to the people as many find it difficult to travel to a hospital or doctor to receive primary care.
“The journey to Orangeburg started about 2-1/2 years ago with review of county health outcome data and DHEC (Department of Health and Environmental Control) cancer profiles, numerous conversations with leaders of then-RMC Orangeburg and meeting with key community stakeholders,” Brooks said. “The need for a Clemson Rural Health hub clinic became obvious to our leadership team.”
The clinic will also partner with MUSC Health Orangeburg to provide complementary services for the hospital.
“While we will maintain our own panel of primary care patients, we will also support referrals from other clinicians and health care organizations in the area,” Brooks said. “In this way, we can provide a valuable support service for both patients in need and their existing health care provider.”
“In addition to the active clinical focus, we will operate specialized support in remote patient management and virtual care, will host a robust internship program with local universities and colleges to help shape the rural health workforce and facilitate clinical research/clinical trials in rural and underserved communities,” Brooks continued.
“We are working to integrate healthy food and cooking options with health care services to enhance the pace to which patients with chronic disease (e.g., diabetes, hypertension) can realize improvement in their health outcomes.”
Brooks said the clinic sees itself as a “neutral broker,” meaning that it will collaborate with a variety of organizations and institutions.
“Currently our collaborations allow us to bring our mobile health units into communities which do not have convenient access to health care and provide cancer screenings and primary care services,” Brooks said.
Some examples of partnerships include:
- The clinic’s collaboration with councils on aging to place telehealth carts into senior centers to expand access.
- Collaborating with South Carolina State University to open internship opportunities for dietetic and social work students.
- Collaborating with FoodShare in Bamberg to acquire food boxes for hypertensive and diabetes patients.
- Collaborating with the hospital and its rural health clinics to deliver the new Regional Life Span Diabetes Program for Women.
The Orangeburg clinic will be the university’s third. Others are in Pickens and Oconee counties.
“Our presence in Orangeburg is meant to be a long-term commitment to improving access to care and health outcomes for the people of this region,” Brooks said. “Having said this, Clemson Rural Health is grateful for the support of the South Carolina Legislature, the Governor’s Office, and the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.”
“Their commitment to our organization to help rural and underserved communities improve their health outcomes was (and is) critical to the ability for us to expand into higher need areas throughout the state,” Brooks said.
Clemson Rural Health’s goal is to eventually support all of the state’s 15 persistent poverty counties through hub clinics.
As part of Thursday’s ribbon cutting, attendees got to take tours of the clinic’s mobile units as well as the physical clinic itself. Columbia-based Fancy That Catering helped to provide refreshments and cake for the event.
For more information about the Clemson Health Clinic at Orangeburg, call 803-516-4227. The clinic can also be reached at clemsonruralhealth@clemson.edu
Contact the writer: gzaleski@timesanddemocrat.com or 803-533-5551. Check out Zaleski on Twitter at @ZaleskiTD.
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