By BILL KETTLER
Mail Tribune

La Clinica del Valle plans to open a satellite clinic in west Medford by late summer to provide better health care for people who can't afford regular visits to doctors and dentists.

Money to staff the clinic will come from a $540,000 federal grant announced last week by the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Phoenix-based nonprofit clinic will house its new satellite in a 6,200-square-foot building at 1307 W. Main St.

"It's a big step," said Dr. Paul Mayer, the clinic's medical director. "It's really exciting to be able to expand our capacity."

Mayer said the new clinic will provide medical and dental care as well as mental-health services. There will be examining rooms for a physician and two other health-care providers, such as physician's assistants or family nurse practitioners, and work space for two dentists.

The grant is one of 28 awarded across the United States to expand health care services for low-income people. It's part of a long-term Bush administration plan to double the number of uninsured or underinsured patients served by community-based health centers.

La Clinica serves about 4,500 low-income patients in its six-year-old building at 3617 S. Pacific Highway, but there's no room to expand at that location. Mayer said opening a clinic in west Medford made sense because as many as 10,000 residents there have no access to basic medical care, and 17,000 have no access to basic dental care.

Statistics from La Clinica's grant proposal show the need for additional health-care providers to serve west Medford's 28,000 residents. Twenty-five percent have incomes that fall below the federal definition of poverty; about 45 percent have no health insurance; 35 percent are under the age of 18; and 23 percent are elderly.

The new clinic's West Main Street location will make it convenient for many people who don't own a car to get medical and dental care, said Tom Herod, president of La Clinica's board of directors.

"A lot of those people will be able to walk to La Clinica," Herod said.

The nonprofit organization bought the Main Street building for $325,000 earlier this year. Mayer said La Clinica managers conscientiously put money aside over time to acquire a building for a satellite clinic.

"The feds don't pay for bricks and mortar," he said. "We had to buy the building out of our own reserves."

Mayer said money to remodel the building will be sought during a $2.6-million capital campaign that will begin later this year. La Clinica's managers hope the fund-raising project also will create an endowment fund for future operations. Limited medical services will be offered while the remodeling proceeds.

The satellite clinic marks a new phase for La Clinica, which was organized in 1988 to serve the region's growing Hispanic community. By 2000, about one-third of its patients were low-income non-Hispanics, a change that reflected the growing number of people who cannot afford health care from other providers.

Herod said the new Medford clinic will fulfill the board of director's long-held dream of expanding to serve more of Medford's low-income and Hispanic residents. But the new clinic won't provide nearly enough doctors and nurses to serve all the west Medford residents who can't afford medical care, said Mayer.

"Even with this, we won't meet the need," he said. "It won't begin to meet the need."