UToledo free Community Care Clinic helping thousands per year

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) - Free health care in the United States is pretty much unheard of, but here in Toledo it’s available, and that’s all because of Dr. Richard Paat.

“We’ve always thought that medicine is a right, you know, it shouldn’t just be specifically for patients that have financial resources,” said Paat.

He says he created the first Community Care Clinic (CCC) back in 2013 after caring for victims of the Haiti earthquake.

“We said let’s do something in our own backyard,” Paat said.

After more than a decade now, the effort’s expanded to several locations, with volunteers helping anyone who walks through the facility doors.

“Not everybody has insurance, not everybody has the money to pay their bills and take care of their medical issues,” said one community member.

“We’ll see a patient that says well, they had a job and they lost the job through some unfortunate event. We’ve had patients that said, you know, we used to refer patients here, and now they have no insurance, and they’ve utilized our clinic,” Paat said.

Not only is the clinic helping community members but also the UToledo medical students looking for more experience.

“We get to practice physical exam skills, history taking, just interacting with patients, communication, and that’s not like what a lot of health campuses have,” said UToledo medical student Noor Abdulhamed.

The clinics run almost every day just at different locations. For more information on where to get service or how to volunteer, click here.

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