March 20, 2010
Franciscan nun brings her dream of health care for uninsured to clinic
By Denise MacLachlan
Herald staff
Franciscan Sister Kathy Wood treats a patient at Clara’s House, a nonprofit primary care nurse practitioner clinic that provides health care to the uninsured. Luis Gris/Herald photo
In a modest office building in Sacramento, a small sign on one of the office doors reads simply, “Clara’s House.”
On the other side of that door is free medical care.
Named for Franciscan Sister Clara Watts, who taught first grade at St. Francis of Assisi School in Sacramento for decades, the clinic was created last year by the collective efforts of many of Sister Watts’ former students and their friends. The group is headed up by Sister Watts’ former student and sister in religious community, Franciscan Sister Kathy Wood, the clinic’s director.
For years, Sister Wood had imagined starting a clinic for the poor. She had co-founded Francis House in Sacramento in 1970, establishing a hospitality center for the poor that celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. She’s a nurse practitioner who has spent the last 35 years caring for the poor in Los Angeles.
When her friends joked that she should come back to Sacramento and open a free clinic, Sister Wood talked over the idea with the provincial of her order. Then with the support of her community, the Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity, she returned to her hometown — and invited all of her friends to help create the clinic, which opened in late January.
Like Sister Wood, the president of the clinic’s board of directors, Sister of Social Service Claire Graham, is a St. Francis School alum, as is the board’s secretary, Maureen Douglass. Another board member with long roots in the community is Mercy Sister Mary Redempta Scannell, who for many years served as a hospital administrator at Mercy San Juan Hospital in Carmichael.
“I held a meeting to discuss whether a clinic was possible, and I invited everyone I knew,” Sister Wood said. “Then I started asking people I’d just met.”
One of Sister Wood’s new friends is the clinic’s outreach program manager, Sister Mary Ellen Howard, a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. After teaching for 30 years in Kenya, Sister Howard moved to Sacramento two years ago to look after her mother. Sister Howard was drawn to the clinic, she said, because it’s “a model of compassion and health care.”
“We give the poor good health care and give others a chance to use their professional skills as volunteers,” Sister Howard said. Nurses volunteer to perform the health care and professional medical office staff volunteer for the administration work, she noted. A health care attorney is guiding them through the myriad requirements necessary to make Clara’s House a Medi-Cal provider.
The process requires binders full of paperwork and protocols, she said, but is worth all of the effort because of the programs the clinic will then be able to bring to the poor, including Every Woman Counts, which would fund pap and breast exams, and Child Health and Disability Prevention, which would fund children’s physicals and immunizations.
Being a licensed Medi-Cal provider would also allow nurses at the clinic to refer patients to the appropriate doctors, too, she said, so that children with heart murmurs, for example, can get the care they need.
But even as a provider she can’t send the kids to a dentist or to an optometrist for glasses, she noted, since Medi-Cal doesn’t cover those needs.
Undeterred, the volunteers at Clara’s House are raising funds to cover the $125 cost of a retinal exam and the cost of glasses for their clients.
The clinic is absolutely necessary in these economic times, said Sister Scannell, who directs the Sisters of Mercy AIDS ministry program in addition to her work with Clara’s House. “This is an economic depression,” she said. “People are out of work, and they can’t afford health care.”
Unemployment in California currently stands at 12.5 percent, and in Sacramento at 13.1 percent, with underemployment adding another 10 percentage points, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly one in four adult Californians needs a full-time job.
Part-time work rarely carries medical benefits.
Sister Wood noted that because county services and non-profit clinics have been cut back or eliminated, many people have no access to health care at all, and others are shamed for needing care. She recounted accompanying an insulin-dependent diabetic man to a clinic for the insulin that keeps him alive. She witnessed his being turned away empty-handed with a rude comment from the clerk.
Another person with diabetes managed to pay the $30 co-payment required at a local low-income clinic, she recalled, where he was not given insulin nor had his blood sugar checked. But he did come away with two prescriptions that totaled more than $750, Sister Wood said. His blood sugar levels were more than 40 times higher than they should have been when Sister Wood drove the man to a hospital emergency room.
She related these stories to The Herald to explain that the emotional care of the poor is also paramount. At Clara’s House, she said, everyone is treated with compassion and dignity.
Sister Wood noted that the clinic requires people to make appointments to receive care. The appointment system keeps lines from forming around the clinic, she said, and saves people from interminable waits.
Clara’s House
What: A non-profit primary care clinic treating uninsured clients
Where: 3319 J St, Sacramento, CA 95816
When: By appointment only; call (916) 448-3976
Who: Clients are people with no access to medical care; volunteers are people who want quality work
Web site: www.clarashouse.org
