Samaritan House operates two Free Medical Clinics, one in San Mateo and one in Redwood City. Each highly recognized Clinic provides primary and specialty medical care to uninsured, low-income residents. The two Clinics employ only eight staff members, yet provide over 9,000 patients visits each year.

Who is Treated
Patients of our clinics are the working poor. They tend to earn just enough income to be ineligible for Medi-Cal coverage, yet do not receive health insurance through their employers and cannot afford to pay for “out-of-pocket” health insurance. Often these residents are forced to seek treatment at local emergency rooms and become saddled with medical bills that they are unable to pay. Samaritan House’s Free Medical Clinics fill this gap in healthcare access for the uninsured and save emergency room resources for emergencies.

Professional Volunteers
Thanks to its innovative volunteer-based model of service, Samaritan House’s clinics are able to treat such a large number of patients with a very small paid staff. Almost all of the medical professionals working at Samaritan House’s Clinics are volunteering their time free of charge. These doctors are retired or currently practicing medicine and want to serve their community in their limited spare time. Many doctors look forward to volunteering because it allows them to escape the bureaucracy of managed healthcare and allows them to practice what they deem to be “pure medicine”.

Services Offered
Specialty services offered at one or both of our Free Clinics include dentistry, gynecology, breast cancer screenings, dermatology, diabetic care, endocrinology, internal medicine, neurology, orthopedics, ophthalmology, optometry, pulmonology, nutritional counseling, psychology, and psychiatry.

Patients who require specialty care not offered at the clinics are referred to other doctors in the community who generously volunteer their services to our patients. We also receive significant financial support from Peninsula Healthcare District, the Sequoia Healthcare District and the Peninsula Community Foundation each year. Mills Peninsula Health Services and Sequoia Hospital donate laboratory tests, x-rays, cardiology and neurology studies when needed. Thanks to the contributions of these hospitals and volunteer medical professionals, Samaritan House provides access to comprehensive healthcare to thousands of community members who may otherwise be shut out of the traditional healthcare system.

Sharing the Secret of Compassionate Care
Samaritan House periodically provides tours to national and international professionals studying the success of the Medical Clinic model. Another service that our Free Clinics provide to the community is the opportunity for medical students and residents from UCSF and other Bay Area schools to engage in the Free Clinic experience. This helps foster a new generation of socially-minded physicians and leaders.

National, International Recognition
Samaritan House has been providing free medical care since 1992 and has been recognized for this forward-thinking Free Clinic model in national print and broadcast media. Articles have been published in Modern Maturity, Parade Magazine, and the front cover of The New York Times. The clinics have been featured on ABC’s Evening News with Peter Jennings, PBS’s California Connected, and CNN’s Democracy in America.