Kentucky surgeons save Sundays for charity care

Medical leaders in Louisville are looking to replicate a Lexington program for the uninsured .

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. Oct. 2, 2006.

Like his father before him, Paul Kearney, MD, has a heart for the poor. It's a trait he acquired as a boy watching his dad devote one day a week at his pediatric practice in Newark, N.J., to treat patients whose families couldn't afford to pay.

"He always thought it was an obligation he had to the community," said Dr. Kearney, now a surgeon in Lexington, Ky.

Dr. Kearney shares that sentiment but thought giving vaccinations and tending to aches and pains at a free clinic wasn't the best use of his surgical skills. Then he heard about Surgery on Sunday, a Lexington program that offers surgical care the third Sunday of each month to poor and uninsured Kentuckians. It was the right fit.

Since joining the program, he has done hernia and gallbladder surgeries and plans to take his residents there to teach them the importance of caring for the uninsured. "You're fully trained to provide this care and these people need to have these operations done," said Dr. Kearney, professor of surgery and chief of trauma and critical care at the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center.

Across the nation, charity clinics provide primary care to the poor, while some physicians give free care to uninsured patients in their offices. But a program that provides free surgeries is rare.

Operation Access in San Francisco and Fresh Start Surgical Gifts in Carlsbad, Calif., are among few programs that regularly offer free surgical care to the uninsured, physician leaders said. In September, Surgery on Sunday marked its first anniversary of operating in a donated surgical center -- a model that might spawn other charity surgical clinics.