EVERETT – Providence Everett Healthcare Clinic, the nonprofit clinic that serves uninsured and other low-income patients, is kicking off a $500,000 campaign to expand its medical and counseling services.
The clinic operates out of converted storefront office space at 1001 Broadway near Everett Community College.
The money would allow the 4,200-square-foot clinic to expand by 1,253 square feet, said Dr. Tony Roon, who oversees the clinic.
“We’d like to expand into the space next door, which is available,” Roon said. “We’ll start the planing this year and hope to do it next year.”
The extra space would provide room to serve more primary care patients and expand its fledgling counseling services.
Plans call for five new exam rooms for medical services, enough space for an additional 6,000 patient appointments a year, he said. Two additional nurse practitioners would be hired.
The clinic now has eight exam rooms, enough space for about 10,000 annual medical appointments.
Two other rooms would be added for counseling services, he said.
The clinic first began offering limited counseling services in March. Two University of Washington faculty members volunteer their time one day a week, providing services to eight to 10 children and adults a day, Roon said.
Part of the money the clinic hopes to raise would allow the clinic to hire a full-time counselor.
The fund drive will be coordinated by the Providence Everett Foundation, the same organization that assisted with the drive to establish the nonprofit clinic, which opened in 2004.
However, additions in the counseling program are planned even before the clinic’s expansion.
Two more part-time counselors, both of whom are UW faculty members, are expected to begin volunteering at the clinic this fall, Roon said. They will provide services to school-aged children.
“Kids are having issues and there’s nobody that the parents can turn to to help deal with these issues,” Roon said.
The goal is to provide help to kids at an early age, before problems balloon in to potentially lifelong issues, he said.
Compass Health currently provides counseling services to Medicaid patients, but there are many people who don’t have insurance and can’t afford services for counseling and mental health issues, Roon said.
Many people who need psychiatric services in Snohomish County end up in hospital emergency rooms because there’s no where else to get service. “That doesn’t seem to be a therapeutic environment for people with mental health problems,” he said.
Adding a counselor to the nonprofit clinic’s staff, combined with the hours provided by volunteer counselors, would allow the clinic to have a counselor on-site five days a week, Roon said.
Providence Everett Healthcare Clinic opened in January 2004, the result of a nine-month fund drive that raised more than $1 million in private donations.
It began offering dental service to its patients in 2004. The services are provided through a traveling van operated by volunteers with Northwest Medical Teams International.
The van now comes to the clinic once a month. It is expected to begin twice-monthly service later this summer.
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