Los Angeles, CA. The Saban Community Clinic, with five sites located throughout Los Angeles, has worked hard in ensuring that its patients receive accessible healthcare during the global pandemic of COVID-19.
“We all need to unite and we all need to make sure that we’re there for each other mentally,” said Josue Portillo, Lead Front Desk Specialist from the Saban Beverly Health Center. Portillo discussed the difficulties that the staff has faced in keeping their doors open for vulnerable communities in Los Angeles, as well as the state of the regular services provided by the clinic.
The priority for Saban Community Clinic is to keep as much of their services open for those in need with as little risk as possible. Portillo talked about how they switched from “face-to-face contact” for regular appointments and results to “100% phone conversations” with patients when COVID-19 cases first began to emerge in California.
Saban Community Clinic today prioritizes all contact with patients to be over the phone. However, in the cases where blood work or any other type of screening is needed and approved by a patient’s doctor over the phone, Portillo and the Beverly Clinic’s staff will sanitize all areas patients may come in contact with before and after they come into the clinic.
Communication and Marketing Specialist Valeria De Luna commented on how important it is to keep “preventative services” open during the pandemic “regardless of how long this takes,” which includes screenings for STIs and pre-scheduled vaccinations for children. “That’s the biggest thing for us is making sure that we keep our community healthy from other things as well,” De Luna said, “and just making sure that those needs are addressed.”
The Free Shower Program is a regular service provided by the Saban Clinic to help individuals struggling with homelessness to receive access to a shower, a free toiletry kit, as well as other beneficial services provided by the clinic.
The program will continue to be open for these patients during the pandemic under strict limitations, which Portillo said was a bit difficult to enforce in comparison to their other services. “We are trying to provide the same services and keep our doors open for them because we know that they are very vulnerable in the community,” said Portillo.
“In the beginning,” Portillo said, “We worked hard for them to understand that we were limiting the amount of people in the building.” The Beverly Clinic currently only allows two unhouse patients participating in the program to come into the building at a time. They will be put into a room where they can charge their phone or organize their belongings for half an hour, fifteen minutes to take a shower in the facility, and then ten minutes to gather their belongings and leave the building so the staff can “sanitize the whole area before the next patient comes in.”
There are also tents outside of the entrances that provides shade and some care (seen in the picture above) while the unhouse patients wait their turn for the shower program.
De Luna commented on how their unhouse patients often do not have easy access to information on the Coronavirus or mobile devices to do a phone/video conference before going into one of the clinics in Los Angeles.
“There are all these different things that our patients have barriers to and so we really have to understand that our patients are coming from a really different perspective,” De Luna said, “we are really being that source for our community and providing them that outlet for them as well here.”
Portillo continues to help answer questions and concerns from individuals who have limited access to essential information on the pandemic and take care of patients who have to come into the clinic.
“All of our staff members’ encouragement for each other has really allowed us to push each other and support each other and make sure that these things can continue on a daily basis,” Portillo concluded.
If you would like to help Saban Community Clinic to continue providing these important services to the Los Angeles community during this difficult time, click here to donate to their emergency fund.
Click here for more videos about the clinic’s work during the pandemic.
From Saban Community Clinic:
The Saban Community Clinic was founded on the principle that healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Our clinics provide Whole Person Care to everyone regardless of income or immigration status. This includes medical, behavioral health and dental care.
For over 50 years, we have been redefining community health through a systemic approach that creates a lasting impact on individual lives and creates healthier communities. We have been awarded the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Recognition Level 3, a model that puts the patient first.
