Claras House

During 2021, Clara's House continued to provide access to our patients through phone and video, as well as in-person, appointments. Since COVID-19 was still rampant, we did not open to in-person regular appointments until mid-year. We did continue to see patients in-person for urgent issues. We also continued to host student interns for the California State University Sacramento Spanish Medical Translation certificate program. Since the University held classes solely by Zoom in the first half of 2021, we were able to honor their remote learning program by having the students phone each of our 1500 or so patients during the pandemic. So, even though our safety net patients were also remote on video and telephone, we were able to provide high-touch medical access by contacting each of our patients during the year -- even if it was only to check-in to see if they needed any medical services.We received a grant from the National Association of Free Clinics to purchase flu vaccines, and were also able to provide free vaccinations (flu and more) in the last half of 2021 through in-person appointments. The grant also included monies to design and create short nutrition videos on nutrition topics, such as the "The Plate" . We created four videos on two topics in both Spanish and English. So, during the last half of 2021, we also were able to resume normal patients services which include: history and physical exams, follow-up appointments, free labs (CLIA waived such as A1C and cholesterol as well as commercial lab tests such as CBC, CMP, etc.) audiometry, mammograms. and free vaccinations, free eye exams and glasses through a VSP program, PAPs as appropriate, respiratory therapy, nutrition, blood draws, and prostate exams as appropriate. As we ended 2021, we were back to providing our normal line-up of primary medical care services for our patients.