Clinic provides hope for man who falls between healthcare cracks — VIDEO

Albert Yasbick is one of those people who falls between the cracks of healthcare: he doesn’t qualify for medicaid, and he is not old enough for medicare. His job doesn’t provide insurance, and the option of individual insurance through the Affordable Care Act is too expensive.

This may not matter so much if he was of relative good health. It is a dire situation for someone diagnosed with Parkinson’s, like he was about five years ago.

A family doctor referred him to Volunteers in Medicine of Southern Nevada, a group that has given him the medical attention he needs. Every experience he has had at their clinics has been positive and caring, giving him a sense of peace in an ostensibly hopeless situation.

Headed by Dr. Florence Jameson, the group Volunteers in Medicine of Southern Nevada cut through the noise and controversy surrounding healthcare by slowly achieving one simple goal: healthcare for all. To effectively achieve this, they offer primary care services to low-income and uninsured individuals.

They opened their first clinic, and the first free clinic in Nevada, in January of 2010. In October of this year they were able to open a second clinic, the Ruffin Family Clinic, on Martin Luther King Boulevard. They are so far on track to serve 41 percent more patients than last year.

Only a core administrative group is paid, an overwhelming majority of nurses and doctors volunteer their time to provide access to healthcare for those in Nevada who most need it.

Find Rachel Aston on Twitter: @rookie__rae