Free medical clinic underway at Spokane County Fair and Expo Center

Residents of the Inland Northwest are lining up by the hundreds to receive free medical, dental and eye care at the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center – and there’s plenty of room for more patients. The fairgrounds have been transformed into a working field hospital with nearly 1,600 volunteers, including more than 100 physicians, dentists and ophthalmologists and hundreds more supporting medical staff. The event, Your Best Pathway to Health, will serve patients Monday and Tuesday on a first-come, first-served basis, at no charge. “We have more capacity than we have patients,” said Costin Jordache, a spokesman for the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, which helped coordinate the event. The clinic is a service of Adventist-Laymen’s Services & Industries and is supported by numerous local sponsors and medical companies. Boxes of medical equipment, office supplies and drugs began arriving at the Expo Center Friday afternoon. Services range from vision care and complete dental treatment, including crowns and root canals, to comprehensive women’s health services – Pap tests and ultrasounds – as well as treatment for sexually transmitted infections and general surgery. Cardiology and gastrointestinal exams also are available. “For people who don’t have this available for themselves, it’s a great opportunity,” said Heather Languis, a grocery store employee from Elk, who waited several hours to get a broken filling on one of her teeth fixed. Languis, 33, said she hasn’t been able to afford dental insurance – and hasn’t had a professional teeth cleaning – since she got out of the Army in 2005. The dental clinic was by far the most crowded on Monday, but volunteers said there’s room for many more patients. The event is aimed at those who are uninsured or underinsured, but Jordache said no questions are asked, and no ID is required for service. John Thaemert, of Deer Park, went to get a new eyeglass prescription Monday – for the first time, he said, in 12 years. A former bus driver who now drives for the ridesharing service Uber, Thaemert said he and his wife can’t afford a $500 deductible that’s required to get eye care insurance. They thought, “That $500 deductible is going to kill us,” he said. The event also offers lessons and counseling aimed at promoting healthy lifestyles, from diet to exercise to quashing bad habits like smoking and drinking. “We want them not only to get well by getting a prescription,” said Dr. John Torquato, chief of the event’s primary care clinic. “We want them to live a healthy lifestyle.” Spokane Mayor David Condon worked together with the Spokane County Commission to secure use of the Expo Center for free for the clinic. He estimated $8 million worth of care is being donated. Officials said the goal is to treat 1,500 patients each day. The last event was held at the Alamodome in San Antonio, where 1,700 volunteers treated 6,192 patients in two and a half days. People have come from all over the world – including Saudi Arabia, Peru, Switzerland, Albania and more than a dozen U.S. states – to volunteer in Spokane. “There’s a lot of people hurting, a lot of people in need,” said John Materne, a volunteer and Seventh-Day Adventist from Rice, Washington. “It’s a great thing to be able to help people.”