Lend a Hand to Seven Hills Family Medicine

Many of you have reached out to us at Seven Hills Family Medicine to find out what you can do to help in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election. We are grateful for this outreach because despite what attacks might be coming our way, we aren’t giving up- we are pushing forward. This practice was started by a team that has over fifteen years of experience providing stigmatized health care in a hostile environment, and we will use that experience to not just survive the next four years, but to expand our practice and serve more folks.

If we are going to do this quickly enough to meet the coming demand we will need your help. We are asking our community for help getting us into a larger building as soon as possible.

A larger building will allow us to expand our services in the following ways:

Important note: Seven Hills operates as a private business to limit how much the government can dictate our operations and interfere in the care we provide. As such we are asking for gifts, not charitable contributions. Unfortunately, gifts are not tax deductible.

For more details, read on:

The incoming Trump administration has made their intentions known, and the only question that remains is how quickly they will move to gut the Affordable Care Act, further limit access to abortion, and restrict the provision of gender affirming care. While we wish we didn’t have to be, we are prepared to navigate this coming landscape. We built Seven Hills Family Medicine to be resilient no matter which party is in control of the state and federal government. We provide high-quality, affordable care regardless of insurance status, and we are not beholden to investors who might push us to prioritize profits over people.

Since we opened our doors two years ago we have onboarded over 800 members to our direct primary care practice; nearly half of which identify as trans or gender diverse. We’ve provided gender affirming care to teenagers from Louisiana, Florida and North Carolina. We’ve helped abortion seekers from all over the south including Texas, Alabama, West Virginia, and every state in between.

Most of the gender affirming care providers in Virginia are already operating at maximum capacity, with wait times for appointments stretching to six months or more. We are now the last state in the South without a gender affirming care ban for minors. When other southern states follow Florida’s lead in expanding their bans to adults it will create a tremendous new demand for gender affirming care in Virginia that we don’t have the capacity to meet.

We know for certain that the new administration will take steps to restrict access to abortion by pill, particularly when it comes to those provided through telehealth. If they are successful, the demand on brick and mortar clinics will be overwhelming. We hope to be ready when that happens, and that means having more space to manage the increased patient volume.

If we keep growing at our current rate, in approximately 6-8 months Seven Hills will hit the limits of our current clinical space. We will have to stop taking new primary care patients and limit the number of abortion appointments available right when the demand for both is spiking.

We predict that without community support the process of acquiring a larger space and renovating it for the needs of our clinic will take us about 12-14 months. That would leave a potential period of 6-8 months (or longer) during which Seven Hills will be forced to turn away patients that need us. We are going to do everything in our power to make sure that doesn’t happen, which is why we are asking for help. We hope that you are willing.

With gratitude - The Seven Hills Family Medicine team