Community Medical Clinic of Aiken County provides care, calls for support

AIKEN COUNTY, S.C. (WJBF) — Founded in 1998, the Community Medical Clinic of Aiken County serves uninsured adults 1964 living with chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, asthma, and heart disease.

“We help those individuals to get on their feet with the goal of eventually going back to work so they can find their own insurance. But we’re the safety net under the safety net for the individuals that need medical care the most,” Executive Director Orian Jeter said.

The clinic provides free medical services, prescriptions, and health education. Last year, it served more than 480 patients and logged more than 20,000 encounters.

“Our individuals in Aiken County, they are in need of transportation as well. So sometimes it’s a little hard for them to get to doctor’s appointments. But we work with them. We do telemedicine as well, phone calls to check on our patients, so we also meet them out in the community.”

They recently saw an uptick in unhoused people needing assistance.

“So we go to different places where we know homeless individuals are frequented and we send our community health workers there. They talk with them, help them become familiar with our staff, and when they finally are able to get here, we take care of them as well.”

The clinic relies on grants, donations, and volunteers—including a shortage of specialist volunteers—to keep services running. Jeter says their care can be life-saving.

“When [the patient] came to us, they were without medications. What they left with is, of course, medications, but we were able to do an EKG on this individual to find out some irregularities that actually ended up saving this individual’s life.”

Funding from sources like Horse Creek Academy helps stock medications, blood pressure monitors, and other essentials. The clinic’s RISE program focuses on holistic wellness—addressing physical, mental, financial, and social health.

“You can be physically well, but if you’re not mentally well, if you’re not financially well, if you’re not socially well, it’s about putting all those pieces together for holistic wellness, and it addresses all of the things that people are going through.”

Partnerships with USC Aiken bring graduate students in nursing, public health, and psychology to support patients weekly. Jeter says expansion is a priority: a new building, mobile van, and satellite clinics.

“If we could take the clinic to our patients with a mobile van or a bus several times a month to some of our very rural territory of Aiken County, it will serve a need that is not currently being met.”

The clinic continues to call on the community for support through donations, volunteering, mentorship, and in-kind contributions to keep its lifesaving mission going. A fundraising event, Lights, Camera, Impact, will be held at Newberry Hall at 5 p.m. on November 22.