Partnership to Allow AIDS Care Clinic to Remain Open

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which announced in July it would be closing the largest AIDS care clinic in the San Fernando Valley due to funding shortfalls, will remain open by entering into a partnership with Gottlieb Medical Group, headed by one of the nation’s best-known AIDS experts.

The two entities will formally announce today their plan to operate a joint facility under the name AHF Valley Healthcare Center/Gottlieb Medical Group.

The jointly operated clinic will be situated on Riverside Drive between Whitsett and Coldwater Canyon avenues in North Hollywood.

Gottlieb, who named the disease acquired immune deficiency syndrome while on the faculty of UCLA in 1981, said Tuesday night that the joint venture would allow the groups to “share overhead” and provide a “a cost-effective solution for AHF.”

Gottlieb said he believed it was important to preserve AHF’s presence in the Valley.

“There’s no reason that people with HIV or AIDS in the Valley should have to go to the other side of the hill for services,” he said.

The clinics now operated separately by the nonprofit AHF and the Gottlieb group in Sherman Oaks will both close when the new facility opens.

The new facility will open Oct. 7, according to AHF spokeswoman Andrea Hecht. AHF and Gottlieb now serve a combined total of about 800 patients.

In July, AHF President Michael Weinstein said due to the rising cost of drug therapies, the clinic needed an additional $1 million to continue operations. But county health officials turned down the request.

AHF primarily serves patients who lack insurance and have low incomes.