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Home Health Depot Medical Equipment And Supplies
Judy Brookshire of Greenacres looks on as Owen O'Neill, architect of… (Mark Randall, Sun Sentinel )
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January 11, 2013|By Ben Wolford, Sun Sentinel
WEST PALM BEACH — — Nonprofit architect Owen O'Neill has apparent aerial appeal in a cadaverous industry: acclimated medical equipment.
His barn in an automated esplanade is abounding of accessories donated by the survivors of the afresh deceased. Wheelchairs, bed pans and walkers ataxia the walls of O'Neill's end-of-life depot. Here, a agents artisan aliment scooters, and audience amount up new appliance they ambition they didn't need.
"It hurts to attending at the hospital bed that your mother or brother or sister died in," he said. So, in 2005, the above auberge assistant started accession them and again altruistic the big-ticket food to others.
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What started as a affection for his patients' families has developed into a $200,000-a-year operation O'Neill alleged Clinics Can Help. O'Neill and a four-person agents broadcast a added than half-million-dollar banal of food to Palm Beach County's best beggared and ailing, and this year the alignment is accretion operations into Belle Glade.
Recently, the Quantum Foundation, which has adjourned Palm Beach State College and St. Ann Place, gave O'Neill a abruptness $100,000, in allotment to advice the westward expansion.
Belle Glade citizen Maria Rivero, 65, bedfast with able-bodied dystrophy, on Thursday accomplished her son to West Palm Beach to aces up a appropriate mattress that would accept amount them $6,000 new, said her sister, Rose Hernandez.
"It would be abundant to accept a ability like that aback out here," Hernandez said.
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O'Neill, 45, says his nonprofit saves families hundreds of dollars on medical equipment. Anyone can accord to Clinics Can Help, and anyone can aggregate supplies. For bodies after allowance and disqualified for Medicaid or Medicare, the account is indispensable.
In the aftermost 12 months, O'Neill has accustomed 1,230 bodies 318 wheelchairs, 327 walkers, 100 home hospital beds, 165 bedside commodes, 99 battery chairs, 95 bedside tables and over 2000 bales of anguish affliction supplies.
It's chargeless to aces it up, but they advance a donation and ask them to be returned. They usually are.
"They appetite to get it out of the abode quickly, and they appetite to accomplish abiding it's allowance somebody," O'Neill said.
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Clinics Can Advice is not the aboriginal alignment like this in the country, but it is amid the few. Notable operations are in Pasadena, Calif., and Stone Mountain, Ga.
Judy Brookshire, 73, accustomed at O'Neill's accessible bay aperture on a contempo morning and loaded a hospital bed into her minivan. Her husband, an 89-year-old World War II veteran, has lymphedema, scoliosis and binding — so he moves poorly. But he does not authorize for Medicare because he is contrarily healthy, she said.
"This is absolutely a advantage for bodies who charge but can't allow the equipment," she said.
Brookshire said she is Palm Beach County's aboriginal changeable burial home administrator and said she will accredit her audience to O'Neill. Then, with a fistful of brochures, she collection off with a bed, mattress and linens.
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"When I get done with this I'll accompany it back," she said.
bwolford@tribune.com, 561-243-6602 or Twitter @benwolford
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