You may not have noticed but two years ago the Locust Creek Health Care Center started its campaign which is scheduled to end in one more year with a free hospital for sick people.
This may be what Obama is waiting on--the completion of the free hospital. It would greatly reduce the cost of health care for those who are admitted there.
Well, our RSS reader has picked up Dr. Adams doings and here they are:
Phase I: A Hospital as Home • 1971–1983
The Gesundheit Institute began as a group of twenty friends, including three doctors, who moved into a six-bedroom home and called it a free hospital. The hospital was open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week for all manner of medical problems from birth to death. 500-1000 patients were seen each month, with 5-50 overnight guests a night. Though staff had to work outside jobs in order to support themselves and their families, for the first 9 years none of the staff left. Over its 12-year history, 15,000 patients were seen. These years provided a "proof of concept," affirming the direction of building a full-scale, rural hospital to serve as a place of service and a model of care.
Phase II: Building on the Land • 1981–1998
As a future hospital site, Gesundheit purchased 321 acres in Pocahontas County, West Virginia with the help of donations. Infrastructure construction included building a 3-story woodshop, a domed “Dacha†for housing up to 8 staff members, a Chrysalis-shaped classroom, a lake, gardens, and farmhouse expansion.
Phase III: The Movie and Global Outreach • 1999–2008
In 1998, Universal Studios released the movie “Patch Adams†starring Robin Williams, based on Patch Adams’s book Gesundheit. At the end of the film, Universal Studios inserted the inaccurate statement that Gesundheit had already built its free hospital. While this false claim hindered Gesundheit's ability to fundraise for the free hospital, the movie itself raised visibility and helped launch a decade of teaching and Global Outreach.
Phases IV and V: Building the Teaching Center and Clinic • 2007–2011
Dr. Patch Adams and members of the Gesundheit Institute have lectured at medical and nursing schools in over 65 countries and on five continents, reaching approximately 150,000 attendees per year. Over 1300 people per year participate in Gesundheit's medical student electives, volunteer programs, alternative spring breaks, health care system design intensives, humanitarian clown trips, and health justice gatherings.
In July of 2007, The Gesundheit Board launched a campaign to build the Patch Adams Teaching Center and Clinic, which will teach health care design and provide a positive global model of health care delivery on our land in Pocahontas County, West Virginia.
Editor's Note: Now if they would start mowing the grass we might be able to see where the hospital is to be built. This will most likely be the hospital that sets the world record for hospitals to be built! How many years now?
I remember that some ten-fifteen(?) years ago Patch was the keynote speaker for the school personnel- I believe that at that time he was charging $2500 a speech (I think he reduced his fee on this occasion for us local yokels). Now multiply this by all the speeches he has given over a couple of decades....plus whatever he got out of the movie. Not a bad deal he has going. They do still get the volunteers (believers) at Gesundheit- I met a big group of them again this summer at the Hillsboro library. Now, Norman, I think you could really get into the big time if you could spread news of this scam-not only national but international. They even get people from abroad. Don't these moviemakers do any checking?
