When Sam was a baby he had Medicaid. I was a teen mother married but with very limited income. I had been a patient At the Greater Meridian Health Clinic for all of my pregnancy and his medicaid approved physician was there as well. He was very sick one day and we took him to the public clinic that he was assigned to and they were closed for some reason. Sam was listless and his fever was very high and not relieved by Tylenol or Motrin. I didn’t know what else to do so I took him to Dr McEachin’s clinic at Medical Arts Pediatrics. Dr. McEachin was my pediatrician when I was a kid and I trusted him. They saw Sam immediately. Dr. McEachin saw on his x-ray that Sam had pneumonia and he called us to his office. He told us that our insurance wouldn’t cover an admission from his office. He told us that Sam was very sick and that we needed to be in the hospital. He put his notes and x-rays in an envelope and sent it with us to GMHC (Sams Medicaid preferred provider) and told us to tell his preferred provider to admit him to the hospital.
We went to the clinic he was assigned to and spoke with the triage nurse. On triage his O2 sat was 84 and his HR was 184, his resp rate was 40 and she couldn’t get his bp. (I wasn’t a nurse at this point and I had no idea how serious these vital signs were) We gave her dr McEachin’s notes and all the labs and x-rays. She told us it would be at least 2 hrs before he could get back to see the dr. While she was telling us this our cell rang and it was Dr McEachin telling us to come straight to the Er at Anderson’s and that we could be admitted under our coverage if we went through the ER. We arrived at the ER and Nurses were waiting for us because he had called ahead. They put sam on breathing treatments immediately. He stayed in the hospital for 12 days. We saw Dr McEachin a few times during that stay. We saw his colleagues the other times. I later found out that Dr McEachin waived his physician fee and allowed us to be admitted to him for free despite our Medicaid. We were admitted under the ER and he saw us for free as a pediatric consult. He didn’t do this because he had to. He did this because he saw a child in need and he wanted to help. He loved his patients. He didn’t see medicine as a dollar sign he saw it as a calling.
God bless Dr. John McEachin. God bless the doctors that follow in his foot steps.
