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WWW.JUSTOUT.COM
NOVEMBER 11, 2011
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Sources Of Pride
Community members give back, one person at a time
BY AARON SPENCER
Help for the Long Term
Shortly after Bill Bard, 65, moved to O re­
gon in 2002, he began taking full-time care of
his aging mother. She was 87, and after four
years under his care, she died.
Then Bard’s own health started to buckle.
Two months before his mother died, he no­
ticed his shoes were too tight. He had a con­
dition called idiopathic polyneuropathy, which
caused him to lose feeling in his feet. Now he
can’t walk safely without assistance, and he
uses a rolling walker to get around.
But Bard’s disability didn’t stop him from
winning an Oregon Governor’s Volunteer
Award this year. He won in the Outstanding
Senior Volunteer category for his work with
the Oregon Long-Term Care Ombudsman, a
federally mandated state agency that checks
on the care o f seniors in assisted-living facili­
ties. It was work he started after his experience
caring for his mother.
“I never had to place her in long-term care,”
Bard says, “but it was considered, and I learned
a lot about the pros and cons.”
Bard has been volunteering with the agency
for four years. He is assigned to several facili­
ties, where he goes to investigate care and
check up on complaints. The work requires
some training, people skills and a fair amount
o f record-keeping.
The record-keeping is where Bard shone.
All of the activities done by the volunteers
must be recorded and turned in to the state,
which then submits the information to the
federal office. W hen Bard began working with
the ombudsman program, all o f the forms
were on paper. He had career experience do­
ing information processing with airlines, and
made the whole process an online, electronic
one— an innovation that helped secure the
governor’s award nomination.
Bard also turned his interest toward a group
Above: (I to r) Deputy State
Ombudsman Ana Potter, Bill Bard and
Bard’s partner, James Donder, at the
Governor’s Volunteer Awards Nov. 4
Right: Teri Bunker
that was close to him: the state’s aging LGBTQ_
population, seniors who often aren’t prepared
for the world they face when entering long-tern
care. Many haven’t done the legal legwork re­
quired to avoid fights when they want to see
their partners—to whom they are not legally
wed. Some end up going back in the closet.
“Some of our gay and lesbian senior elders
are ending up in long-term care, and I’m mak­
ing it a mission of mine to make sure that there
is no discrimination and to get the word out
that there is help for you if you’re gay,” he says. seen it all, working there,” she says.
She went next to the Clackamas County
Health Department, where she took care of
Of Primary Concern
people who didn’t have insurance.
Teri Bunker, 47, has always taken care of
Then in 2003, she decided to open her own
underserved populations.
clinic, Bridge City Family Medical Clinic,
From Reno, Nev., she moved to Portland in now located in Gateway. At the time, the O r­
1986, got her nurse practitioner degree and egon Health Plan, the state’s Medicaid pro­
went to work for the Multnomah County gram, had just suffered a budget cut. Bunker
Sexuallv Transmitted Disease Clinic— “I’ve saw a lot of people without a primary care
J
provider and was well versed in taking care of
individuals without insurance.
“I’m an entrepreneur at heart,” she says. “I
wanted to be the boss, and I did the math, and
1 just knew that I could do it.”
Bunker is a big believer in primary care, and
she wants it to be accessible to everyone, espe­
cially the LGBTQ_population.
“They’ve had a lack of success with health
care because there’s a lack of acknowledgement
with them—even on intake forms,” she says.
Bunker tries to comhat this problem from
the first step a patient takes in her office. She
doesn’t make assumptions and gives people
room to disclose their gender identity and
sexual orientation.
“Fve wanted my office to be a place that you
would want to go whether your straight, gay,
lesbian, bi, trans—whether you have Oregon
Health Plan or regular insurance,” she says.
She’s notably seen several transgender pa­
tients, for whom all-inclusive health care cov­
erage is more difficult to find. Bunker offers
trans health care and spoke about the subject
this year at the Nurse Practitioners o f Oregon
Education Conference.
In fact, about 20 percent o f Oregonians do
not have health insurance. But because Bun­
ker is a strong proponent of primary care, she’s
trying to get over this hurdle by starting a plan
o f her own.
The plan offers coverage in return for a $54
to $89 fee per month, plus annual enrollment,
and was helped made possible by Senate Bill
86, which passed this year and labels the ser­
vice as health care, not insurance.
“I’m very passionate in primary care and
finding ways to deliver primary care in a sim­
ple, affordable fashion that services the pa­
tients and the providers and not the insurance
company,” she says. “We need to take the in­
surance companies out o f primary care." JOS
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