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Mountain View’s longest running low-income primary health care clinic has moved to a new location and is preparing for its grand opening later this month.
On Thursday, Aug. 22, from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., the clinic will open its doors to the community to show off its brand new facility on the second floor of 900 Miramonte Ave. The open house will feature food, refreshments, tours and presentations given by health specialists.
The MayView Clinic began operating in 1972 and has been serving residents of Mountain View and other northern and Midpeninsula communities for more than 40 years. In 2011 its building was sold and the new owner decided to turn it into an apartment complex.
At the time, some worried about the future of the clinic future, which CEO Shamima Hasan said serves about 6,000 patients a year — 40 percent of whom are uninsured. If the clinic, which takes about 19,000 unique appointments each year, was forced to relocate to another city, local officials speculated that many low-income Mountain View residents would be left scrambling to find ways to get to either of the other two MayView clinics in Palo Alto and Sunnyvale or make the longer trip to San Jose, where there are more social services.
“A lot of the low-income people live in Mountain View,” Hasan said, explaining why it was important for her to make sure the Mountain View clinic stayed in town. “We are the only community clinic in Mountain View providing the comprehensive services that we provide.”
Without the MayView Clinic, many residents would end up in hospital emergency rooms for issues like a fever , a broken wrist, or letting their diabetes get out of control, Hasan said. “The emergency room is not for when you have a temperature,” she said. “We look after people. We provide them with health care and maintain their medical conditions.”
Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian, who represents Mountain View and Palo Alto, said he was happy that MayView was able to stay in the city.
The clinic is “indispensable,” according to Simitian, who explained that while much of his district is wealthy, people often forget there are people trying to make ends meet on a daily basis. People of modest means, he noted, continue to struggle as the economy improves and housing prices rise. “Without MayView, there are a lot of services that people in the community wouldn’t have access to,” he said.
Ultimately, according to Hasan, the move from the clinic’s former location at 100 Moffett Blvd. puts the Mountain View MayView Clinic a little more than a mile from its previous location — just off of El Camino Real near its intersection with Castro Street.
Though the clinic is now further from the Mountain View Caltrain station and transit hub, there are still buses that go right up to its doors — VTA lines 22 and 52 — Hasan said. Plus the building is larger and in better shape than the previous facility. “It is turning out to be a good thing,” she said.
This is absolutely fantastic news. This will complement the rest of MV’s excellent health care infrastructure.
It seems odd that the story didn’t mention that CSAA (better known as the AAA auto club) is on the first floor. How did this unusual pairing of two uses in one building come about?
Before I was eligible for Medicare I had no insurance coverage. Due to the Bush economy, my arena of employment hit the toilet and I lost my job. I was near retirement age but not quite old enough for Medicare and my Social Security benefits.
I developed some puzzling symptoms, and felt ill too.
I learned about the Mayview clinic in Palo Alto. I checked with them to see if I was eligible for discounted health care under their guidelines. I did qualify for some subsidies to offset the costs of care; and got excellent care for pre-diabetes including appointments with a nutritionist/dietician who gave me thorough advice on how to improve my food program; plus the M.D. gave me very practical suggestions on good exercise options.
Without becoming reliant on Rx’s, my pre-diabetes labs numbers all improved and my life took an upturn in any way you’d want to measure.
These wonderful people saved my health.
Please support them any way you can.
It’s wonderful that this important clinic has found a new home here in Mountain View. It is also great to see that they treat those with insurance and those without.
There is another clinic in Mountain View that treats only working people without insurance, and that is the RotaCare Free Medical Clinic in the basement of the YMCA building. It is staffed mostly with volunteer professionals.
I went to their clinic to get help with a small but painful issue. I was told they would only help me if I was (1) on Medicare, or (2) and undocumented immigrant. I even offered to pay for the office visit, though I am disabled and barely working. They refused to see me. Many others, most of whom were probably illegal immigrants, were getting free help.
Steven A.: why didn’t you just say you were undocumented? Hard to prove the lack of something.