For nearly two decades, 90-year-old Jim Arndt has dedicated his time and expertise as a volunteer pharmacist at the Community Free Clinic of Decatur-Morgan County. Born at the height of the Great Depression on a farm in Cullman, he was the youngest of nine children. Money was tight.
He became a pharmacist out of pure practicality. “When I was a child, my parents were always talking about how difficult it was to make ends meet,” he said. Becoming a pharmacist seemed like the way to go because, he figured, people would always get sick and they would always need medicine to cope with illness.
Before retiring, he owned Medical Arts Pharmacy off Somerville Road for 35 years. Arndt’s friends Ray Norris and Bess Newsom helped open the free clinic for the community to help keep people out of the emergency room. Offering stable, ongoing care for patients with conditions like diabetes or emphysema keeps them from needing repeated emergency room visits, Arndt said.
In addition to very low-cost prescriptions, the free clinic pharmacy carefully monitors patient drug use to make sure they are taking it correctly, Arndt said. For example, if a diabetic has a 30-day supply of insulin and he is refilling every 60 days, they know he is skipping days and can counsel him about the importance of taking his daily insulin. “This keeps people out of the emergency room,” he said.
“It’s a lot less cost and trouble than trying to provide primary care for a patient from a hospital emergenc.