WARRENSBURG — Multiple local community resources have partnered with Sedalia-based Katy Trail Community Health to provide medical services and hot lunches to Johnson County citizens.
Journey Home, Refuge on Ming and various area churches are providing a hot lunch for anyone in need at the First Presbyterian Church every Tuesday, along with the Katy Trail Mobile Unit that is available for patients to visit for health and dental care.
“Our goal was to get out into the community in Warrensburg and spread our services that we offer,” Katy Trail Sedalia Medical Clinic Site Manager, Holley Boone said. “We saw a need and so we wanted to bring all of the services that we could to this community.
“We are averaging around eight patients a day. So we have seen a lot of new patients and we have seen an increase as the weeks went on,” Boone said. “We were hoping that we would get a lot of patients. We knew there was a need here, so we knew if we got the word out to the community that we would be able to get those patients in. It’s just getting the word out.”
The mobile unit has two exam rooms and a small lab, according to Katy Trail CEO Chris Stewart. It is staffed by a nurse practitioner and Stewart said it offers most of the medical services offered at any of Katy Trail’s brick-and-mortar locations. Patients who visit the mobile unit can also get connected to other Katy Trail services offered in Sedalia, such as virtual behavioral health, optometry services and pharmacy services.
Katy Trail accepts Medicaid and Medicare, as well as other private insurance. Those without health insurance are able to get assistance from Katy Trail to apply for insurance or may receive vouchers to offset costs when applying for its sliding fee program.
Journey Home’s Mary McCord said that in the future, Journey Home and the other services would like to make the lunch and health clinic available all week.
“We knew there was this need. What we want to do is a daycare center where this could happen every day,” McCord said. “Where people can come to play games, get a meal and have a community. We are just doing it right now on Tuesday. We need that, our community of homeless in Warrensburg really needed health care.”
Patients have all said good things about the health clinic and the lunch that is provided. Deanna Atkinson was referred to the Katy Trail Mobile Clinic by Journey Home.
“Me and my family are homeless and Journey Home brought us to Katy Trail,” Atkinson said. “They have welcomed into a family of five. The services that they bring here are great services. It is just great for the community to bring the community out of poverty and back into normal society.
“This place serves a lot of the community and it's helpful for the ones who don’t have anything… I think it can be a great step for the community to bring people out of the situations they are in.”
Hot lunch is provided from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church, 206 N. College St. in Warrensburg, and medical services are available from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the parking lot of The Food Center, 137 E. Culton St. in Warrensburg.
For more information about medical care from Katy Trail, call 877-733-5824.
