Mobile Medical Clinic to Aid Homeless : Health care: A renovated RV begins making the rounds of shelters five days a week. Officials hope to reach more than 2,500 patients a year.

For the Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic, Christmas came early this year with the gift of a mobile medical unit to serve the homeless.

The renovated recreational vehicle, donated by a Calabasas landscaping firm, includes three fully equipped examining rooms, a bathroom with shower and toilet, and a small waiting room outfitted with a television set and VCR to show educational videotapes. The mobile clinic began stopping at shelters in Downtown, East Los Angeles and South-Central last week.

With the new vehicle, the clinic hopes to increase the number of homeless it serves from 1,300 annually to more than 2,500. The trailer will operate five days a week.

“We’ll be able to see more patients and be able to provide better health care,” said Bob Suazo, director of the clinic’s homeless outreach program.

The clinic had run a medical outreach program for four years, but it was a time-consuming, awkward operation. Clinic staff would stock their cars with medical equipment and travel to various shelters, such as the Los Angeles Women’s Shelter on Skid Row and the Dolores Mission in East Los Angeles, where they would set up a makeshift examining room in an office or meeting room.

So when clinic staff spotted a photograph of a medical mobile unit in a magazine about a year ago, they began working to acquire one. A fashion show fund-raiser in July raised about $3,000 toward the approximately $100,000 needed.

Meanwhile, a fully equipped mobile unit was sitting dormant in a parking lot a few dozen miles away. Burt Sperber, owner of the landscaping firm Environmental Industries, spent two years and $150,000 building the unit. He had planned to donate it to a North Hollywood medical facility to help homeless children, in particular, obtain medical care.

But after the vehicle had been built, the medical facility pulled out of the project. Through contacts at the L. A. Family Housing Corp., the Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic learned of the RV and sought to use it.

The Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation is providing funding for the mobile clinic’s operational costs and its staff of five.