Samaritan Health Services – InReach Clinic

Overview

Samaritan Health Services (SHS) believes that everyone in the community deserves quality health care. With this in mind and supporting the organization’s motto of building healthy communities together, in 1993 SHS partnered with the Linn County Department of Health and Human Services and several community agencies to operate the InReach Clinic. The InReach Clinic is the SHS safety-net clinic that provides medical, dental and mental health services for low-income, underinsured, uninsured and homeless families in Linn County. Volunteers who provide care to the area’s most needy residents include 23 physicians, 12 nurses, 4 psychologists, 2 receptionists, 2 social workers, and 4 Oregon State University pharmacy students – all of whom dedicate countless hours of service.

Samaritan Albany General Hospital hosts the clinic, which has dedicated 2 full-time staff, a program coordinator to oversee the operations of InReach Clinic and a patient navigator to assist bilingual patients. InReach has close to 75 community volunteers that help with the operations of the clinic and have donated more than 4,500 hours in 2016 to support the clinic.

Impact

InReach Clinic addresses an identified need in Linn County, demonstrated by the number of patients seen in the clinic each year. In 2016, 322 patients were seen for medical and mental health conditions, and 1,123 patients were provided prescription assistance. With the addition of the bilingual patient navigator, more than 2,500 contacts were provided to assist Limited English Proficient patients with their care plan, referrals and community resources.

Lessons Learned

InReach Clinic has provided free or low-cost medical, dental and mental health services for more than 20 years. Volunteers from the medical and mental health profession have allowed the many patients who are uninsured, underinsured or homeless to receive care they would not have available unless they visited the emergency department or an urgent care facility. InReach Clinic’s collaboration with the various partners has proved that coming together with a specific goal in mind can not only save on medical costs to health care organizations, but also improve the health and well-being of the most vulnerable people in the community.

Future Goals

The loss of the dental services through a partnership with a local agency has created a gap in services for uninsured, underinsured and homeless patients. InReach would like to develop a strong sustainable community collaboration to establish much needed dental services to address the need of the uninsured, underinsured and homeless populations in Linn County.

Contact: Julie Manning
Vice President, Marketing, Public Relations & Development
Telephone: 541-768-4172
Email: juliem@samhealth.org