VANCOUVER, Wash. — For over 30 years, the Free Clinic of Southwest Washington has been supporting thousands of uninsured Clark County residents.
“Our primary purpose is to provide free, compassionate, quality healthcare,” said Communications, Development, and Outreach Director Pam Knepper.
The clinic’s services include basic healthcare, urgent dental care, medication assistance, immunizations, diabetes care and self-management, insurance navigation, and even specialty care through a program called Project Access.
KIRO 7 spoke with Knepper about the clinic’s history in Southwest Washington and how she feels about the work they do.
How it Works
Uninsured patients call into the clinic and set up an appointment. The clinic doesn’t ask for any type of documentation, according to Knepper.
“You’ll just go, and you’ll see the doctor,” she says.
Right now, appointments are booking about a week out to see a primary care physician. If you end up having a follow-up appointment after that, you’ll need to see a specialist. Those appointments can take up to a month to schedule, but Knepper says they really try to get people in the door as quickly as possible.
“You know, if you don’t have health insurance, that can be a very scary thing. And so to just know that we’re there to be able to help individuals who find themselves in that position... I mean, it’s just, it’s overwhelming,” said Knepper. “Every day that I get up, I’m very happy that I work at the free clinic, and I know the rest of the staff feels the same way, and certainly the volunteers do; that’s why they give their time.”
Staff and Volunteers
The clinic has a small paid staff of 13, but boasts a network of more than 150 volunteer healthcare professionals who donate their time and expertise to helping the clinic run.
“We’ve got some people that have been volunteering with us from when we started, which was in 1990,” said Knepper.
Knepper highlighted the positive partnerships the clinic has maintained with other healthcare systems in the Vancouver area, including nursing schools, medical assistance programs, and two residency programs.
“A lot of our volunteers have said that once they get done with medical school and they’re out working, they want to come back and give more time to the free clinic, just because of the experiences that they’ve had,” added Knepper.
History of the Clinic
KIRO 7 asked Knepper about the history of the clinic:
“The original founders were Dr. Sam Beall, who was a physician in Vancouver, Washington, and then Reverend Ed Rankin, who was an Episcopal priest at one of our churches in the Vancouver area. The two of them, along with a couple of other community members, saw a real need for people who did not have insurance, and they needed healthcare, and where were they going to go to get it?” Knepper said.
And so, we started out, actually, just by having one night a week where people could come. And then, as time went along and as we saw that there was a real need for the services, in 1993, we extended that to two nights a week, and then it just sort of grew from there.
We had originally been called the Community Health Clinic, and we changed our name to the Free Clinic of Southwest Washington because in 1996, we were able to get our 501c3 status.
During COVID, specifically in 2020, we actually switched over from a paper charting system to an electronic medical record system. Up until then, we just had the paper files, and so that was a real nice change for us. And then we also changed over from being a walk-in urgent care clinic, because that’s how we saw people before COVID. After that, we switched over to an appointment-based primary care clinic for our patients."
Supporting the Clinic
The clinic does not charge patients, and they do not receive any insurance or government reimbursement for their services, which means they are entirely paid for by donations from individuals, businesses, and foundations.
Knepper says the best way you can support the clinic is to volunteer, donate monetarily, or attend one of their fundraising events.
“I wish that I could say that the need for our services is decreasing, but it’s not. In fact, it seems as if, as each year goes along, the need for our services just keeps going up and up,” said Knepper. “People always ask me, you know, why do you work at the free clinic? And I say that, when you think about the mission behind what it is that we do, it makes my job very easy to do, because it’s like, how can you not get behind that?”
To learn more, visit their website: freeclinics.org
You can also check them out on Facebook, Instagram, and X.
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