Jewish Community Free Clinic settles into new home

Eleazar Gonzalez Sandoval waited three months to return for medical care at the Jewish Community Free Clinic, a nonprofit facility that treats patients of all ages who have one thing in common: no health insurance.

The clinic, founded in 2001, had shuttered its Rohnert Park office in May and spent the summer renovating a new location at 50 Montgomery Drive, next to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.

Sandoval, a Petaluma resident, got in line for an evening clinic session - patients are seen on a drop-in basis - for follow-up care of shoulder pain sustained in an auto accident.

“For me, for now, it’s the only place I can go,” said Sandoval, a house cleaner, wearing a black-and-white plaid shirt and blue jeans.

Asked where he would go for health care without the free clinic, he said: “That’s a good question. It’s a relief not to get a bill for people like me.” Sandoval, whose English is limited, later spoke to a nurse practitioner in Spanish through an interpreter.

The clinic, staffed by about 100 volunteers, including medical care providers, nurses, interpreters and clerks, is a safety net that provides $600,000 worth of free services a year, said Donna Waldman, the executive director and one of several clinic co-founders.

Patients receive no bills, nor are they asked for paperwork or identification, eliminating all barriers between ailing people and health care, she said.

Founded by Dr. Robin Lowitz, Waldman and others, the clinic is not connected with any Jewish organization but is based on the Jewish principles of tzedakah (charity) and tikkun olam (repairing the world).

It started out in a one-room clubhouse in Cotati, migrating to two other sites before settling into the 1,200-square-foot office in Rohnert Park, paying $15,000 a year in rent.

Moving again was the “furthest thing from our minds,” Waldman said, before the Montgomery Drive building, a former medical office, “came out of the blue” from a donor she declined to identify.

Public records indicate that Jonathan and Rose Batzdorff of Santa Rosa donated the building to the free clinic.

“It’s like being in luxury city,” Waldman said, showing off the 2,800-square-foot clinic’s four exam rooms, children’s immunization room, doctors’ office, staff office and meeting room.

The walls are freshly painted, with donated works by local artists for decoration.

“It’s so wonderful to be here,” said Rita Kagan, a retired registered nurse, clinic co-founder and volunteer staffer.

Deborah Roberts, the clinical director and chairwoman of the nursing department at Sonoma State University, noted the sound of children enjoying a small play area next to the patient waiting room. “We have playland,” she said.

In addition to being rent-free, the Santa Rosa site is more centrally located for patients, with Memorial Hospital’s emergency room close by, Waldman said. On the new clinic’s opening night, a patient with heart palpitations was sent to the ER.

In its last fiscal year, the free clinic recorded more than 2,000 visits by about 1,500 individual patients. The average patient makes fewer than two visits, Waldman said, because the clinic’s goal is to find a “medical home” for each person.

In one sample of follow-?up patient contacts, the clinic found that 55 percent had registered with a local community health center, she said.

Clinic staffers help eligible patients, who must be legal residents, enroll in Cal Fresh, the state’s food stamp program, and Covered California, the state insurance exchange established under the Affordable Care Act.

The law, which expands Medi-Cal eligibility and offers subsidies for private health insurance to lower-income people, could ultimately put the free clinic out of business, Waldman said.

“I would hope so,” she said, noting that undocumented residents currently are excluded from the federal law.

Meanwhile, Waldman said, “people keep coming” to the free clinic.

For more information, including clinic services and times, go to ?jewishfreeclinic.org.