BURBANK : Free Immunization Clinic Opens Doors

On its opening day Friday, a free immunization clinic at Thompson Memorial Medical Center already had anxious parents bringing in Burbank public school students to get them ready for the new year.

“This is a dream which has come to fruition today,” said Tomme Lenz, head of the Burbank Education Foundation, which opened the clinic with a $125,000 grant from the Burbank Community Hospital Foundation, the original operators of the hospital.

Setting up a free clinic was an idea that Lenz had been discussing with hospital foundation members for five to 10 years, she said. In developing the clinic, organizers originally envisioned basing it at the Burbank Unified School District headquarters on Buena Vista Street, said Dr. Keith Sanneman, a local podiatrist and a member of the education foundation.

“But we were able to find room inside the hospital where we wouldn’t have to spend $40,000 on a relocatable, temporary building,” Sanneman said.

The clinic, where Burbank public school students and their preschool siblings can get free immunizations on a walk-in basis and free physical exams by appointment, shares space with the hospital’s occupational services program.

The clinic will be open from noon to 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Gail Wrentz, a licensed vocational nurse with the occupational medicine program, said that she had to turn away one parent who showed up two hours early.

The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, for which the clinic is an outside provider, is supplying the free shots. The clinic has hired two part-time nurse practitioners to work with a hospital doctor who has volunteered to be the clinic’s director.