[Noozhawk’s note: Second in a series sponsored by the Hutton Parker Foundation. Click here for the first article.]
In 1973, an idealistic team of medical professionals opened exam rooms in a 50-year-old bungalow on Santa Barbara’s West Micheltorena Street. Their goal: provide quality medical care as a fundamental right to all patients, regardless of their ability to pay.
Nearly 50 years later, 4,000 patients strong and growing, the Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics is on the cusp of a historic $6.75 million expansion into a purpose-built facility just across the street from that century-old home housing the Westside Clinic.
“They started with the house, rolled up their sleeves, renovated it over the years, but it’s still a house,” Nancy Tillie, Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics’ chief operating officer, told Noozhawk.
“They’ve lifted the roof to make room for upstairs offices and a staff meeting room, but it’s very tight quarters: six exam rooms and a very small lab. You can’t fit two people through the hallway at the same time, and there’s more need in the community than can really be served here.”
Today, the nonprofit organization operates eight facilities serving nearly 22,000 unique patients each year with that same idealism.
“I do it for the love of the work,” said Dr. Susan Lawton, SBNC’s associate medical director and lead clinician at the Westside location, at 628 W. Micheltorena St.
“What we’re doing is affordable, meaningful, human-based, whole-person, patient-centered care.”
SBNC’s $20 million capital campaign kicked off in 2017 to address not only facility expansion, but $3.25 million for equipment and ongoing maintenance, and a $10 million endowment to help ensure the organization’s long-term solvency. It sits just $825,000 short of funds needed to expand the Westside Clinic.
“We’re looking to continue to raise the money to help people with modest means get health care, have access to health care, particularly to try to build equity in that area,” Tillie said.
Initially proposed at 8,334 square feet, the three-story structure at 621 W. Micheltorena St. may ultimately come in at 12,000 square feet to accommodate exam rooms, dental operations, a dispensary, meeting space for integrative behavioral health specialists, and wellness navigators, as well as a first-floor community room and office space.
“The Westside Clinic is wonderful,” Lawton said. “There’s something in that building that adds a spirit and grounding that makes it feel like home. I think patients feel that.
“The down side is it’s crowded, it’s inefficient. Since the primary goal is to be available for patients in need, and we need to be able to see more patients than that space will allow, the sacrifice is that we’ll have to move out of that building.”
Lawton has dedicated a dozen years of her career serving the South Coast’s low-income and uninsured middle class, at no small expense to herself and her family. Doctors and staff at SBNC facilities earn nonprofit incomes, unlike their peers in private practice, but Lawton said the financial disparity with her professional peers has been entirely worth it.
“Being able to take care of people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to access excellent health care allows me to go home at the end of the day and feel like I did something good,” she said. “We do it because most of believe health care is a right, not a privilege, and we want to provide the same, or I’d say better, health care available to those with means.”
SBNC’s facilities include the Westside, Eastside, Goleta and Isla Vista primary care clinics; an integrated care clinic near downtown Santa Barbara; Eastside and Goleta dental clinics; and the Bridge Clinic for outpatient substance abuse treatment across from Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. Service is provided at low cost or no cost, with sliding payment scales based on ability to pay.
“We do have patients who are that middle class,” Tillie said. “We have more self-pay patients now than we’ve had in a long time.”
When the Affordable Care Act took effect in 2010, self-pay patients dropped to 17 percent of SBNC’s visits. Today, those uninsured patients account for up to 30 percent of the workload.
SBNC strives to provide care for patients as close to their home neighborhoods as possible, but not all services are available at the existing Westside clinic. Case in point: dental services.
“Even though it seems like they’re close, if you’re someone who doesn’t own a car so you have to walk or take a bus, distance matters,” Tillie explained. “We have about 1,400 patients from the Westside traveling to the Eastside Clinic for oral health care, putting that clinic at capacity.
“If we could put dental operatories at Westside, we’d relieve that pressure and make room for more Eastside.”
SBNC also works in close partnership with a variety of other health-care facilities, including Cottage Health, Sansum Clinic, Ridley-Tree Cancer Center, Hospice of Santa Barbara, and medical practitioners throughout the South Coast.
“We have a lot of specialists we can refer people to, agreements, partnerships, MOUs so we can help support patients in the best way possible,” Tillie said. “These relationships run really deep.”
At its own facilities, SBNC focuses not only on patients’ apparent medical needs, but also any personal roadblocks that may be adversely affecting patient health.
“Eighty percent of a person’s health is based on social determinants: their environment, how close they are to their doctor, doing healthy things,” Tillie said.
“It’s really important for us to be able to do that, to enable our wellness navigators to help patients overcome challenges with food security, transportation, day care, employments, whatever they’re facing.”
Click here for more information about the Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics. Click here to make an online donation.
— Noozhawk contributing writer Jennifer Best can be reached at news@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.