Saint Thomas River Park Hospital is working on plans to hold a medical mission in Warren County.
“We’re trying to figure everything out right now,” said Saint Thomas River Park CEO Dale Humphrey. “It will be a charity clinic. We are trying to determine the size, scale and scope of what it should be and in which part of the community to put it in.”
The event will be a free medical screening day for the community. Offered during the event will be free medical, dental, and vision care serving the underinsured and uninsured. A similar event was offered in Grundy County last year.
“It’s a humbling experience to participate in one of these medical missions,” said Humphrey. “We’ll probably have about 500 volunteers.”
The information was given during a meeting of the Joint Economic and Community Development Board while discussing a ThreeStar application so Warren County will continue to be a ThreeStar community.
The ThreeStar program is designed to focus on the areas of Jobs and Economic Development, Fiscal Strength and Efficient Government, Public Safety, Education and Workforce Development, and Health and Welfare. ThreeStar communities have a greater chance of obtaining grants and are eligible for a 4 percent discount on both the business development and community development ability-to-pay calculations.
According to Mayor Jimmy Haley, Warren County needs to improve in the area of Health and Welfare.
“Health and wellness has been our weakness with our scorecard so we have more health and wellness things to add to the application this year that will hopefully show some improvement,” said Haley. “The things the hospital is doing, the school is doing, our health department is doing, Isha is doing, the city of McMinnville’s wellness program. The state is glad we’re focusing on this because that is our poorest score. That’s where we have room for improvement.”
The ThreeStar program requires annual evaluations of communities to continue in the program.
The Joint Economic and Community Development Board meets quarterly.