Orange Street Clinic

Several years ago, the Salvation Army Women & Children’s Shelter in downtown Wilmington contacted the Nemours/ Alfred I. duPont Residency Program in hopes of pursuing a significant partnership. The families occupying the shelter were having difficulty keeping in touch with the medical community. Appointments were missed and vaccines delayed for many of the young patients living in the shelter.

The Salvation Army social workers decided that to maintain up-to-date medical care, they would attempt to bring physicians directly to the shelter. The social workers contacted former Nemours/Alfred I. duPont chief resident, Maureen Leffler, MD. She laid the groundwork for what is now duPont’s newest satellite location, the Orange Street Clinic. Dr. Leffler then passed the project down to another former resident, Benj Barsotti, MD, who further developed the clinic. After almost two years of preparation, the clinic opened its doors on January 7, 2009 to better serve downtown Wilmington’s pediatric population.

The goal of the Orange Street Clinic is to handle acute care such as asthma exacerbations or acute otitis media, while focusing on education and the re-introduction of the family to their medical home. During the visit, they discuss how long the family has been living in the shelter, their prior medical care and future plans for follow-up. Most families can identify a pediatrician in the community who has provided medical care for the children in the past and to whom they hope to return when they leave the shelter.

The clinic does not want to become the patient’s primary care doctor as most families are only there for a short time. The goal is to give patients the care they need while in the shelter, and connect them back to their pediatrician after they leave. Letters are provided to families to take back to their doctors outlining care at Orange Street and anticipated needs when they again see their primary pediatrician. Nemours social workers are present at most sessions to help with insurance issues and to guide families to outpatient practices if they do not have a primary pediatrician.

The clinic is open every other Wednesday evening starting at 6:30 p.m. The Salvation Army recently renovated their housing facilities and designed a new medical office within the shelter, as the clinic is currently operating out of a multipurpose room in the old shelter. The clinic will now have its own dedicated space, and the Salvation Army will be able to advertise the new clinic to neighboring shelters. Orange Street Clinic is hoping to expand their services, see more patients each session, and, with increased patient demand, increase the number of sessions. The Clinic is staffed by pediatric resident volunteers as well as Nemours attending physicians.

If you are still affiliated with Nemours and are interested in volunteering at the Orange Street Clinic, please contact the current resident directors: Amanda Micucio at amicucio@nemours.org or Jillian Savage at jsavage@nemours.org.