Will-Grundy Medical Clinic, LTD
Treating the Community
Will-Grundy Medical Clinic, LTD
Amount Awarded: $202,700 | Completed December 2023
As the only free clinic serving Will, Grundy, and Kendall counties, WGMC provides comprehensive health care, support, and services to the community. Their goal is to reduce fragmentation in the local public health system and target the systemic factors causing poor outcomes, especially for diverse and low-income populations.
Will County’s ARPA allocation have helped the WGMC to continue operating, despite the pandemic’s impact on their operations. It also supported the critical renovations needed to their Joliet-based facility.
About WGMC
Key features of WGMC’s program include whole-person health. This includes looking at the whole person—not just separate organs or body systems—and considering multiple factors that promote either health or disease. It means helping and empowering individuals, families, communities, and populations to improve their health in multiple interconnected biological, behavioral, social, and environmental areas.
Instead of treating a specific disease, whole-person health focuses on restoring health, promoting resilience, and preventing diseases across a lifespan. By using the Multilevel Whole Person Health Framework, WGMC understands that health and disease are not separate, disconnected states but instead occur on a path that can move in two different directions, either toward health or toward disease.
Will County’s ARPA funding has supported WGMC’s ongoing goals, which include:
- Providing person-centered, evidenced-based, outcome-driven programs
- Providing 300 or more clinic sessions per year
- Patient visits: standard of 30 minutes per patient minimum for all patients
- Standard of care (quarterly or monthly visits for patients with uncontrolled disease process)
- All chronically ill and/or at-risk patients to receive at-home health monitoring devices
- Social Determinants of Health Services (housing, mental health, support entering the workforce if appropriate, linkage case management, and more)
WGMC reports that they are performing 80% or better on all goals. All patients receive at least 30 minutes with medical providers during their visits and regular screening for social determinants of health.
Impact of ARPA Funding
WGMC is the only free clinic serving Will, Grundy, and Kendall counties. With a small staff, they are dependent on volunteers and donations. Prior to ARPA funding, they were operating out of a 123-year-old building that was in significant disrepair. The roof had collapsed.
ARPA funds enabled them to continue operating, despite the pandemic’s impact on their volunteer base and these facility challenges. ARPA funds supported a comprehensive renovation and modernization to their facility, which opened on December 2023.
They have also doubled the number of medical clinic sessions offered from their 2021 levels, providing nearly 300 clinic sessions in the current fiscal year alone. WGMC reports that they are now at their pre-COVID levels of care and have served more than 2,000 individuals with health care, social services, and care coordination.
“The ARPA funds have been transformational for our clinic and the community. Our clinic bolsters the local public health system by providing access to health care and social services to the most vulnerable in our community.”
Shawn Marconi | Executive Director