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CrossOver appealRICHMOND, Va.—By noon on a Thursday this summer, whites, Hispanics, African-Americans, and a woman with bubblegum pink hair packed the waiting room at the CrossOver health clinic here. Despite the high traffic, the clinic did not feel like a warehouse of sick people—everything was orderly and clean, as in a good private practice. That sensibility is intentional, because clinic founders wanted patients to sense that they are receiving the best care, not something second rate because it's free. CrossOver is evidence that not everything in U.S. medical care for the poor is dysfunctional. While doctors at CrossOver agree reform is needed, their ministry has succeeded in using parts of the system that work: They serve 4,300 uninsured patients a year on a $2.5 million budget.>>>Local churches from many denominations both in Richmond and in its suburbs are involved with CrossOver, which hosts "mission trips": Local churches send their medical professionals and other volunteers to run the clinic on Saturday mornings. It's a popular way to do medical missions without taking physicians away from demanding schedules: One church on a Saturday last fall sent 17 medical personnel. Rivers, reflecting on his quarter-century of CrossOver experience, said, "If it were not for this ministry, I would not have been able to go out and meet people from all over the city and take care of them. I would have been in my practice. . . . God's using it as a platform for a lot of people to get involved with other people. That's probably the best thing that it's done for the city."
