HECTOR HERNANDEZ | staff writer

A government grant of $477,000 will enable the Azusa Health Clinic to make some needed improvements.

The Azusa Health Clinic will begin remodeling in a month to improve its services to the community after receiving a $477,000 grant.

The Azusa Health Clinic is a nonprofit medical clinic that provides general medicine services to people without insurance. Its patients include those who do not qualify for MediCal or Medicare. The clinic meets the need within the community for people to get medical attention without having to pay a fee. Patients need to meet financial criteria based on their income.

“All the other clinics people will have to pay to be seen,” the clinic’s Nursing Supervisor and registered nurse Magdalena Lopez said. “Some of our patients don’t have transportation. So for them to go to a county clinic they would have to go to El Monte to the comprehensive health center which is kind of far from here.”

There are several nonprofit organizations operating within the clinic including Children’s Dental Health Project which supplies vaccinations and checkups for kids and students and El Proyecto del Barrio which is the Los Angeles agency that reopened the clinic in 2004 after it was shut down when the county was low on funding.

Since its reopening the clinic has been growing. When the clinic reopened it was a part-time clinic and is now open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“I’ve been here for three years and in three years I’ve seen the changes,” Lopez said. “We started with about ten patients a week and thought, ‘Wow! We’re really busy.’ Now we’re seeing close to a thousand patients a month.”

The government grant will help the clinic in its growth. The $477,000 grant was obtained by congresswoman Hilda Solis and will be used for the remodeling and expansion of the clinic.

Director of Clinical Operations for El Preyector del Barrio Lorraine Gutierrez, said the grant is “special funding for the Azusa Health Center services with the emphasis on dental services.”

The remodeling will begin in a month and will give the clinic 12 exam beds and a dental wing with three chairs and a screening room (The clinic currently has seven exam chairs). The clinic will be remodeled one half at a time so it can remain open with 5 beds during the construction. It will then offer nonprofit limited dental services such as screenings and fillings. It will provide children with the checkups they need before going to school.

“There are very few places that provide dental services specifically to people without insurance or even with MediCal,” Gutierrez said.

After the expansion of the clinic there are plans to bring in other doctors on a more frequent basis. The clinic now has one fulltime doctor, one physician’s assistant and three medical assistants with an OB/GYN and a podiatrist coming in once a month.

“The plans are we’re also going to hire another fulltime physician so we’re going [to have] two fulltime doctors and the PA,” Lopez said. “We’ll see more patients; increase the volume of patients that we’ll see.”

The Azusa Health Clinic is making these changes and growing to serve the community and its patients better.

“When you get a hug from your patient and when they give you a big smile everyday when they come in,” Lopez said “to me it’s something that is more than they could pay me in a hospital.”