Membership
Membership
The Georgia Charitable Care Network is unique for its narrow focus on free and charity clinics, individual practitioners, and the needs of low-income and vulnerable populations. We strictly limit our advocacy and funding to these groups to ensure that our focus stays on helping improve health and overall well-being for Georgians most in need of help.
Membership is extended to all who meet GCCN standards as a charitable care provider. Annual dues vary by member but range from $300 to $750 depending on the member’s operating budget. These dues, along with generous support from the business community, grantmaking organizations, and private donors, enable GCCN to continue providing high-level advocacy, educational opportunities, and professional resources for our members.
If you or your clinic qualifies for GCCN membership, we encourage you to join. Thousands of Georgians depend heavily on our members to provide them with primary, preventative, and – in many cases – life-saving medical care.
“The GCCN Focus”
Unify
When Georgia’s charitable care clinics speak as one, their voice is amplified many times over. We unify those who serve the state’s most vulnerable.
Development
We are committed to constantly collecting, analyzing, and applying lessons learned from clinic data, enabling our members to make smarter, better-informed decisions about their future.
Strength
The greater our numbers and more cohesive our voice, the stronger we are and the greater our influence and impact on policy and policymakers.
Assistance
GCCN actively seeks opportunities to aid in the development of services in remote and high-need areas, ensuring that no Georgian is left behind due to geography.
Who Can Be a Member?
Membership in the Georgia Charitable Care Network is restricted to clinics, providers, and organizations that serve the healthcare needs of the uninsured or under-insured. Potential members may include free clinics, sliding-scale and donation-based clinics, and private practitioners who offer discounted care for individuals who are uninsured or unable to pay.
GCCN Programs
Advocacy & Communications
Our members effect real change in their own communities every day, but we all know that for systemic change to happen, state policy has to change, too. That’s why GCCN provides focused, robust advocacy at the state capitol on behalf of our members. We work to promote and even advise on legislation that advances our members’ interests and the interests of public health, drawing on up-to-date statistics that show incontrovertibly that charitable care clinics save taxpayer money, prevent illness, and keep vulnerable Georgians healthy.
Additionally, in keeping with our commitment to staying in touch with members on a regular basis, GCCN publishes a biweekly e-newsletter to share advocacy news, educational and professional opportunities, and important news from the world of public health.
Annual Conference & Clinic Directors’ Retreat
The world of public health is always changing, and GCCN ensures that its members are equipped and prepared for whatever is coming with our annual conference – held in the spring – and a retreat, held in the fall, for clinic leaders. The conference features national, state, and local healthcare and policy leader presentations on best practices and upcoming changes, while the directors’ retreat is an opportunity to network with peers in a more relaxed setting.
GCCN also holds monthly conference calls and regular workshops designed to inform, educate, and build relevant skills among member clinic staff.
Technical Assistance Programming
With staff composed primarily of volunteers, many of our member clinics find it challenging to access the professional expertise they need to drive volunteer recruitment, fundraising endeavors, board development, and other activities. Those needs led GCCN in 2008 to create the Technical Assistance Program, a combination of workshops, individual consultations, site visits, and webinars in which experts provide guidance and advice to member clinics. As a result of this programming, clinics improve their overall effectiveness, strengthen and enhance their organizational infrastructure, and clear the path to fulfilling their mission.
Data Collection
Data is critical for mission fulfillment and effective strategic planning in the world of public health. That’s why GCCN created and now oversees an electronic medical records system for use by member clinics. The system enables the capture of invaluable healthcare data for Georgians in vulnerable populations, including demographics, morbidity, and health status. It also allows GCCN to report with an extremely high degree of accuracy the amount of taxpayer money saved by member charitable care clinics. GCCN then uses the data for storytelling and advocacy purposes, while member clinics use it inform policy creation and enhance organizational effectiveness.
Specialty Care Initiative
With preventative care as our member clinics’ primary focus, in time GCCN recognized a need to provide for patients with special medical needs not offered by the clinics. Thus the specialty care initiative was born – a referral system that links eligible patients to specialty physicians and facilities to ensure those patients get the care they need. To date, the initiative has seen more than 350 patients receive no-cost surgeries and procedures.
Collaboration
GCCN recognizes the critical importance of relationships in helping our member clinics fulfill their mission and places heavy emphasis on partnerships and collaborative efforts with other organizations that offer assistance and valuable resources to free and charitable care clinics. We are always interested in mutually beneficial collaboration, so please get in touch if you would like to explore the possibility of a partnership.
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