In Doylestown, the Silverman Clinic focuses on serving low-income patients and ‘our community family’ | Philly Gives

There’s not a dime left for the doctor. Health comes last — last after rent, after food, after clothes for the children, gas for the car, and heat for the house.

“A lot of our patients are too busy trying to eke out a living,” nurse-practitioner Ann Ruesch said, taking a break in an empty exam room at the free Ann Silverman Community Health Clinic in Doylestown. “Health is last on their list. They pay the rent and they get food before they get health care,” she said.

Since 1994, when the Ann Silverman Clinic opened in a tiny vacant room on the ground floor of Doylestown Hospital, more than 17,000 Bucks County children and adults with low incomes have received free medical, dental, vision, and behavioral health care, primarily from volunteers. There is also help with prescriptions.

The Silverman Clinic’s patients present with the persistent problems of poverty. “Diabetes, high blood pressure, depression,” said Ruesch, who volunteered for a year before becoming a paid staffer in 1996. “There are a lot of muscular skeletal issues from repetitive motion at work. They’re in factories, landscaping, lifting — backbreaking labor.”

The patients’ illnesses may differ, but what they have in common is a desperate need for care.

Amanda Myers, of Southampton, now has a full-time hospital job that comes with health insurance. But when she and her son, then 10 years old, moved back to the area from Florida, “I couldn’t find a job right away,” she said. “I didn’t have insurance.”

What she did have were raging headaches from uncontrolled ear infections. “I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t breathe. It was painful,” she said. Through the Silverman Clinic, she received antibiotics to curb the infection and a referral to an ear, nose, and throat specialist who was willing to treat her for free.

“He told me I was allergic to everything,” she said. She still visits that doctor for monthly allergy shots, only now her health insurance picks up the tab. In the in-between period, a Silverman Clinic case manager helped her obtain Medicaid, government-funded health insurance for people with low incomes.

The Silverman Clinic also cared for her son, now 17, providing the physical examinations he needed to participate in sports. “They were giving out backpacks and school supplies,” Myers said.

“They actually cared,” she added. “There were people at the clinic who would help me with my hopes and my dreams.”

Yes, the Silverman Clinic helped Myers get on her feet and get rid of her ear infections, but Myers said the clinic’s influence goes beyond the assistance provided to any single patient.

“It helps us be kind and caring and loving to support each other and to stand by our community family,” she said. “It’s a roundabout circle. They helped me and now, I’m helping them.”

Stories like these make Meri L. Gaumond, executive director, proud, as does the fact that the Silverman Clinic relies completely on philanthropy — money, volunteer help, and the donation of space from Doylestown Hospital.

The clinic is named after Ann Silverman, the first wife of Herman Silverman, a Bucks County philanthropist and business owner who founded Sylvan Pools and generously supported the mission. Both are deceased.

“It’s truly a beautiful model, the way we restore lives, and all through philanthropy,” Gaumond said.

Like Myers, Gaumond, who took over as director last year, sees her work as a roundabout circle.

“I grew up in Albania and came here when I was 21,” she said. “I grew up in communism. When I came here, I did not have services. I was serviced in a free clinic in Bensalem, and I never forgot that experience. I was grateful to find health-care services at a time no doctor would see me. It solved a problem I had at that time. I couldn’t go anywhere. I had no insurance as a student.”

Gaumond decided to “do something for other people that would make them whole. I felt this job description was written for me. I’m happy to be here and to make a difference in the lives of families.”

The desire to make a difference motivates staff and volunteers, although volunteer Frank Scafuro, of New Britain, was additionally “inspired” by his wife who kindly advised him upon retirement “that I had to do something. I had to get out of the house,” he said, laughing.

Scafuro volunteers by waiting: To help patients contact telephone customer service agents, he will sit on hold on a call in their place, an exercise that can last upward of an hour. On the other end of the phone line, eventually, he will reach a representative of a pharmaceutical company and help the clinic’s clients obtain free or low-cost prescription drugs.

Late last month, for example, he helped a woman with cancer obtain drugs that would have cost her $2,000 every three months. Her husband is “a landscape laborer,” Scafuro said. “He has end-of-life cancer, but he’s still working.

“I felt good that hopefully it buys them some more time and makes it a little better for them,” he said. “In this situation, it is literally a matter of life and death.”

Many of the Silverman Clinic’s clients come from Latin America, and their stories resonate with Sandra Adame, of Doylestown, a patient navigator who emigrated from Bogotá, Colombia, 25 years ago. She worked in pharmaceutical manufacturing as a validation manager until she was laid off in 2020.

Through her church, Adame met some young Guatemalan men, then 15, who had left their families behind to find work in America. At the time, her son was 13, almost the same age, and she could not imagine him undertaking a similar perilous journey.

“They told me the story of coming from Mexico, that it was traumatic, how they were hiding. They were coming to support their families financially. Everything is different. They don’t have their parents, and they don’t know the language.

“They needed help,” she said, and her family became their unofficial American family.

When Adame lost her job, what she learned from the Guatemalan boys inspired her to volunteer at the clinic, which numbers immigrants among its patients.

“This was my opportunity to serve. I’m bilingual,” she said. “I took classes in counseling and trauma and now I’m coordinating appointments for behavioral health specialists and scheduling appointments with specialists.”

A year later, she joined the staff.

As much as she helps the Silverman Clinic’s patients, the clinic has also helped her.

“It changed me knowing that I have the tools, that I can be the bridge, the piece that’s missing,” she said. “It gives me a sense of purpose.”

Jane M. Von Bergen spent more than 25 years as a reporter and editor at The Inquirer. janevonbtheater@gmail.com

This article is part of a series about Philly Gives — a community fund to support nonprofits through end-of-year giving. To learn more about Philly Gives, including how to donate, visit phillygives.org.