San Francisco Free Clinic

4900 California Street
San Francisco, CA 94118
415.750.9894

An ounce of prevention...

  
Mission & History

Clinic Mission

The mission of the San Francisco Free Clinic is to provide free, accessible medical treatment to those without health insurance and to advance the field of primary care by providing educational opportunities for future medical practitioners.

History

The San Francisco Free Clinic was founded in 1993 by two family physicians.  Recognizing that in a city of great medical resources, many people still went without care due to lack of insurance, the founders opened the free clinic in order to care specifically for this population.

Drs. Richard & Tricia Gibbs closed their successful private practice, and moved all their equipment in to a modest townhouse in the Richmond District of San Francisco.  Their next step was to seek support from the medical community.  The response was overwhelming; hundreds of physicians, and several hospitals and other medical facilities offered to provide their services free of charge to clinic patients.

Today, San Francisco Free Clinic patients are able to obtain a variety of primary care and preventive services at no cost at the clinic.  If specialty care is needed, patients are referred to our network of volunteer specialists.  Those requiring hospitalization or surgery are referred directly to county services.

Since opening in 1994, the clinic has provided over 70,000 patient visits.  Medications valued at many millions of dollars have been obtained free of charge for our patients.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of specialty care has been dispensed by our volunteers at no cost to the patient.

In 2000, the clinic moved into a new building at 4900 California Street.  The new site is larger, more modern, and has more exam rooms.  It is in a corner St. Anne Victorian in the Richmond district, and though the medical facilities are more advanced than our prior site, still, it maintains the pleasant, homey atmosphere so cherished by our staff and patients.

 

 

Articles of Interest

Please see below for links to articles on the history of the clinic, and other useful information...

Documents and Privacy Policies

Because we are a free clinic and neither bill nor communicate with health insurance companies electronically, the San Francisco Free Clinic is a ‘non-covered entity” under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).  However, for purposes of good patient care, we will follow the HIPAA privacy and security guidelines to the best of our ability. 

The San Francisco Free Clinic has written Privacy Practices which are available for your review .  Our Privacy Practices document describes how we may use or disclose a patient's protected health information, with whom that information may be shared, and the safeguards we have in place to protect it.  This notice also describes a patient's rights to access and amend their protected health information.  They have the right to approve or refuse the release of specific information outside of our clinic system, except when the release is required or authorized by law or regulation. 

You may download a copy of our Privacy Practices document here. (Adobe Acrobat Reader Required - To Download Adobe Acrobat Reader for free, click here.)

 

 

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