Clinic links poor to the medical care they need

Most of its doctors, nurses and other staff are volunteers

By Lois M. Collins
Deseret Morning News
Published: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 9:33 a.m. MDT
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The Maliheh Free Clinic looks more like a house, with its pale-brick facade, than the bridge that it actually is. In its single year in operation, the clinic in Salt Lake has connected more than 3,000 low-income Utahns who have no access to health insurance and who don't qualify for government-funded programs like Medicare or Medicaid to the medical care they need.

Most remarkable, according to its medical director, emergency-room physician and internist Dr. Mansoor Emam, is that the physicians, nurses and others who have made the work possible are nearly all volunteers. The clinic, which has treated patients in nearly 9,000 visits so far, has a skeleton staff that includes Emam, two nurses who share a full-time position and a receptionist.

"Ninety-nine percent of everything relies on volunteer time and services," Emam says. The clinic enjoys about 200 volunteers from various occupations, including doctors, nurses, dentists, social workers, X-ray technicians, office workers and others. Staffing the center sometimes requires as many as 15 volunteers in a day because of the volume of patients.

Khosrow Semnani, whose foundation provided the money to open the doors, selected the name in honor of his grandmother, who died in 2001. In Persian, the word "maliheh" means "comfort and beauty." The clinic that honors Maliheh (pronounced Muh LEE uh) Abdollahi opened last May at 415 E. 3900 South and since then often serves 50 or more people a day.

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It's not a drop-in clinic or an urgent care facility. Rather, patients make appointments to receive care for a variety of ailments, including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, illnesses like bronchitis and asthma or flu. Well-baby care can be provided there. The clinic also has limited access to sub-specialties, including dermatology, nephrology, orthopedics, endocrinology, says Emam. One or two days a week, there's a pediatric clinic.

Estimates say the number of Utahns without insurance or underinsured may be as high as 250,000. It's a sign of that need that the appointments are often booked a couple of weeks or more out, although the clinic tries to accommodate the urgent needs of established patients and takes very limited walk-in traffic.

The Semnani Foundation, set up by Khosrow and Ghazaleh Semnani, provided the clinic's initial funding of $400,000. Other operating costs in the first year have been donated by local individuals and companies. The clinic also relies heavily on in-kind donations.

While the foundation money provided start-up, the goal is for the clinic to be self-sufficient through contributions, so that the foundation can then open another clinic somewhere else in the state where it's desperately needed.

A clinic such as Maliheh "doesn't solve the main issue" of the uninsured, "but it's an important resource," Emam says.

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