The Perfect Health Care System Would Look Something Like This (VIDEO)
When Dr. Jim Withers learned that Mike Sallows served the homeless of Pittsburgh by giving out food and blankets, he asked how he could help. Sallows said there were a lot of medical needs on the street, and Dr. Withers wanted in. Mike's main advice to the doctor: "Don't dress like a doctor and don't act like a jerk."
That was 22 years ago, and since then, Withers has made the sidewalk a clinic, providing basic supplies and medicine to the homeless as part of his movement, Operation Safety Net. He leaves the white coat at the office and dresses the part (and presumably doesn't act like a jerk). He and his team go out five nights a week to help their clientele survive life without a roof.
The streets are an untamed frontier for medicine, and that suits Withers just fine. He enjoys practicing outside the bureaucratic machinery of the health industry.
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"It's a blessing about the streets. It's so vivid," he says in the video below. "You can actually feel it and do it because you are outside of the structure."
He estimates his team has treated over 1,200 homeless patients a year since 1992. And the impetus behind his mission echoes one that believers might recognize from the ministry of Jesus.
"We need to look out for the most ostracized in our communities," Withers says. "That'll make us better people."
Watch and SHARE the inspiring work of Dr. Jim Withers and Operation Safety Net.
