$120,000 Grant May Revive Clinic

Val Verde’s only medical clinic, which was threatened with closure for lack of funds, is in line to receive a $120,000 grant that would enable it to operate for at least another year, clinic and county officials said Tuesday.

The money for the Samuel Dixon Health Center is coming from the Community Development Block Grant program, federal funds which can be allocated by county supervisors to programs in their districts. Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich approved the grant to the clinic last week, Dawson Oppenheimer, Antonovich’s press deputy, said Tuesday.

Pending approval by the County Board of Supervisors, the money will be given to the clinic July 1, said a spokeswoman for the county agency which administers the grants. The approval is a routine matter, she said.

Val Verde community leaders and the clinic’s staff had feared that the facility would be shut down in the wake of Santa Monica Hospital’s decision earlier this year not to renew its $68,000 annual grant to the clinic, and to withdraw physicians’ services. The grant money runs out May 31. The money from Santa Monica Hospital had been used to pay the staff at the nonprofit clinic, which provides basic medical services on a sliding scale to low-income residents of the tiny community north of Magic Mountain.

Mike Gales, a physician’s assistant who has run the clinic for the last five years under the supervision of doctors from Santa Monica Hospital, called the county block grant “a godsend.”

“If they hadn’t sent that, we would be out of business,” he said.

But although the clinic’s financial well-being appears to be assured for the next year, Gales said he still must locate a new medical director.

Although the facility could pay a doctor if it had to, Gales said he hopes to find a doctor to volunteer.

Over the next year, he said, the clinic will try to develop a regular source of community support.