The Truth About MDA Care Centers
After my last article, Abandoned by the Muscular Dystrophy Association, was posted, many people reached out to me. Some told me their own stories of how MDA abandoned them or their family members. Others were shocked because they didn’t know MDA cut all the services they used to fund. But I had a couple of people tell me I was wrong because MDA Care Centers were still around.
So let’s talk about those Care Centers for a moment.
MDA Care Centers, formerly known as MDA Clinics, used to be very different. Local MDA offices would make appointments for their clients, and an MDA representative would be there on clinic days. The representative would meet with you while you were there and to find out if you needed anything, like wheelchair repairs (which were partially paid by MDA back then) or visits with other specialists, like physical and occupational therapists. And if you didn’t have insurance, MDA would pay for your clinic visit.
But the thing is, even back then, the clinics were never actually funded by MDA.
The doctors and their staff are not, and were never, employed by MDA. There is truly no such thing as an “MDA doctor”. They are doctors employed by existing neurological or neuromuscular clinics who see patients with muscular dystrophy. And they see patients with other neuromuscular conditions too, like cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and many others. In addition, these Care Centers only saw MDA clients once or twice a month. There were designated MDA days.
Two things made these clinics *feel* like MDA Care Centers in the past. The first was that MDA paid for your visit if you couldn’t afford it. The second was that the MDA representative was there and truly cared about your needs.
But now, both of those things are gone.
Though the changes happened years prior, I confirmed with MDA national in 2021 that if someone could not pay for a clinic visit, they could not help and they would refer them to other nonprofits to help with funding.
So MDA doesn’t pay the doctors, nurses, staff. They no longer pay for the visit. They no longer have a representative there. How can they claim to provide “coordinated, patient-centric care in one location” when they have absolutely no part of it anymore?
There is literally one thing that makes these existing medical clinics MDA Care Centers: MDA has given a small grant to designate them “MDA Care Centers.”
That’s it.
This grant does not fund research. This grant does not pay doctors. This grant does not help those who are uninsured pay for visits. This grant only pays for permission to have their name attached to the practice. Think of it like a company that sponsors a football stadium or arena on a much, much smaller scale.
Yes, MDA Care Centers still exist. And yes, people still go to them.
But if you’re donating to MDA to support Care Centers, you’re just paying to support a name and nothing more.
