Clinic Keeps Giving the Gift of Good Medicine : Venice: A health-care clinic that opened 20 years ago for what was hoped would be a short time is still open. In fact, it has just expanded.

When the Venice Family Clinic opened its doors 20 years ago, its founders hoped they would soon be out of business. Instead it has expanded and grown beyond anyone’s expectations.

The clinic initially was founded to appease a group of Venice residents who were angry about the lack of affordable health care and the scarcity of doctors in the area, according to Dr. Mayer Davidson, one of the founders. It is now the family doctor for thousands of homeless, working poor and unemployed people and is bigger than ever.

“Ideally, it should have gone out of business. Everyone should have affordable health care,” Davidson said.

But demand for its services have grown, and in response the clinic opened a newly expanded Venice facility March 19 to accommodate thousands of additional patient visits.

The 11,000-square-foot, $3-million expansion adjoining the existing building at 604 Rose Ave. triples the size of the facility, and will allow it to handle 15,000 more patient visits a year for a total of about 45,000 a year, Executive Director Fern Seizer said.

The white, airy rooms of the new two-story building house office space, a large waiting room, examination rooms, counseling rooms, a dispensary and a full laboratory.

The expansion will probably increase the clinic’s annual operating budget from $2 million to about $3 million, Seizer said. Eighty percent of the budget comes from private donations, she said, including the proceeds of the annual Venice Art Walk, a foot tour of Venice artists’ homes and studios.

Although it will be difficult to come up with the additional money needed to operate the expanded facility, Seizer said, it is badly needed.

Last year, at least 5,000 people were turned away because of lack of room to treat them, she said. “Many get discouraged because we’re so crowded,” she said.

The clinic’s patients are a poor, uninsured population. About 92% have incomes below the poverty level--$12,000 a year for a family of four--and 94% have no health insurance, Seizer said.

Most uninsured patients depend on county facilities for medical treatment, but those facilities have also become crowded.

Even those people who can afford private care could have difficulty finding it in the Venice area, where the doctor shortage that prompted Davidson and others to found the clinic has not changed much. The Venice Family Clinic offers an alternative.

Mothers can make same-day appointments for their children to get shots, prescriptions, or an examination. Walk-in appointments are available to the homeless who need medical treatment or counseling. Seniors can get eyeglasses. All of the services are given on a free or pay-what-you-can basis.

The demand for these services sometimes means a long wait in the clinic’s crowded lobby. Some patients come from as far away as downtown and South-Central Los Angeles, Seizer said. Despite the obstacles, the clinic for many has become the family doctor that will take care of most of their medical needs.

When a patient has a medical problem the clinic cannot handle, the patient is referred to one of several hospitals--Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital, St. John’s Hospital, and Los Angeles County-UCLA Medical Center--that provide free services arranged for at the clinic.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, the clinic’s waiting room was warm and noisy, with mothers and children waiting to be seen for same-day appointments, and homeless men and women who had come in on a walk-in basis.

Andrea Ramirez, 3, clung to her mother’s knees as the two waited to be seen. Andrea had a fever and an ear infection, her mother, Rosalia, said in Spanish. Her work as a maid does not provide medical insurance for her and her two children.

“I’ve been coming here for 10 years,” Ramirez said. “At times we can get Medi-Cal, at times we can’t. Sometimes I take the children to other clinics or doctors, but they’re expensive or don’t accept Medi-Cal. Here, you have to wait, but they treat you well. And they give good, effective medicine.”

Ramirez’s case is not unusual, Seizer said. Many families depend on the clinic sporadically for years. According to statistics compiled by the clinic’s directors, Latinos make up a majority of the patients, many of them recent immigrants who work low-paying jobs.

One crucial service the clinic provides is free medical care for the homeless, who make up about 27% of the patients, both on a walk-in basis and through outreach teams that make weekly visits to nearby homeless shelters.

At one of these shelters, the Bible Tabernacle church in Venice, about 150 homeless women and children bed down every night on the sanctuary’s benches and floors, according to Director Mark Hilst.

Every Tuesday evening, the clinic’s coordinator of services for the homeless, Diane Foray, brings a doctor, a psychologist or social worker, a nurse practitioner, and one or two other volunteers to the church. They set up tables and screens in the church basement and examine or treat whoever needs help. In two hours, they may see 15 patients, some for the first time, some for follow-up treatment after previous examinations at the church or clinic, Foray said.

Most of the families at the shelter suffer from poor health, said nurse practitioner Mary Smith, who has volunteered her time at the clinic for the past six years. “They may not have enough clothes, so they catch a cold. Here it’s like a family. When one person catches a cold, everyone else does,” she said.

Some of the children, many from abusive or otherwise dysfunctional families, suffer from mental health problems expressed through sleep disturbances, anxiety and thumb-sucking, Smith said. Because the clinic is not a formal mental-health agency, it treats the mentally ill mainly through diagnosis and referral to county facilities, she said.

Sometimes the best help the workers can give is to listen. “They very often just want to unload. They want someone to listen to them and treat them with kindness,” said psychologist Joanne Jubelier, who has a regular practice in Beverly Hills but volunteers her time at the clinic.

“The people I see in private practice have the resources to take their kid to be diagnosed, or to see their physician. These families don’t have the resources to even identify their needs,” she said.

Krystal Gregory, 27, said she came to the Bible Tabernacle for shelter after her mother and 4-month-old boy died, leaving her depressed and dependent on her father, with whom she didn’t get along. She didn’t have a husband, and had recently gotten out of the Army. “I was never independent before. I was suicidal, I was crying out for help,” she said.

Gregory got medication for a cough and skin rash from the clinic, along with some compassionate counseling, she said.

VENICE FAMILY CLINIC AT A GLANCE

* Clinic officials say about 92% of the patients have incomes below the poverty level--$12,000 a year for a family of four--and 94 percent have no health insurance.

* The clinic provides free medical care for the homeless, who make up about 27% of the patients. Treatment is supplied through a walk-in basis and outreach teams that make weekly visits to nearby homeless shelters.

* The newly expanded 11,000-square foot facility will be able to handle an additional 15,000 patient visits. Clinic officials say that will about 45,000 total visits a year.