Every Wednesday, for four hours, and once a month on Saturday, Tami Jones leads a small, but dedicated, group of volunteers in running CarePoint Clinic.

Since opening on the Snoqualmie Valley Alliance Campus in 2016, the clinic has provided free primary care to residents five times a month, delivering on a core belief that healthcare is a right, not a privilege.

Together, staff say, their patients — who so often feel lost and unseen in a system rife with insurance technicalities and debilitating medical bills — finally feel seen.

“Several times I’ve gotten these beautiful notes in the mail that say, ‘I don’t know where I would have gone if it wasn’t for you,’” Jones said. “Those are my favorite moments, getting to touch someone who truly feels invisible in the system.”

It’s helping those who feel invisible that makes upcoming improvements happening at CarePoint so exciting for Jones and her staff. After receiving a grant from the Washington Health Care Authority, the clinic will finally able to fund their longtime dream of purchasing and designing a new mobile care medical van.

“This has given us an opportunity to do something we didn’t think we’d be able to do for years,” Jones said. “It’s huge for us.”

The van, which will be operational in the next 18 to 24 months, will provide CarePoint with a second exam room, and also allow physicians to more easily treat those in the 23-mile stretch between North Bend to Duvall.

Medical Director Todd Wright, who started volunteering with the CarePoint in 2018, is hopeful it will solve one of the clinic’s biggest barriers: access.

“We’ve had firetrucks drop people off here before. We’ve had patients who have missed visits many months in a row, not because they wanted to, [but] because they couldn’t get here or their method of getting here failed them,” he said. “Building beyond this space is a great opportunity to serve our community.”

The exam room at Fall City’s CarePoint Clinic. Photo Conor Wilson/Valley Record.

Beyond the van, the other big change coming to CarePoint is a behavioral health component, which will provide free or reduced counseling, said Baly Botten, lead pastor at SVA who has been heading the program.

The program will have seven to eight interns from regional colleges, who need counseling hours as part of their education, who will each see a handful of clients working under the supervision of a licensed director.

“Though they aren’t officially counselors yet, they’re able to help patients while getting their degrees,” he said. “It’s a win-win for interns and our community.”

Botten said they are hopeful to secure another grant that will allow them to construct what he calls “counseling cottages” on the property, which would look like backyard mobile home offices.

To encompass both the medical unit and behavioral health aspect, and make the organization more competitive for future grant funds, Botten said the SVA board recently voted to release CarePoint from its control, allowing it to become its own 501c3 nonprofit.

That means, alongside a partnership with Medical Team International, which provides dental care in the Valley four times a year, the clinic will finally have medical, behavioral and oral care run under one organization.

It is a huge moment of growth for an organization that 15 years ago was just the dream of SVA founder and former pastor Monty Wright, who was trying to figure out how best to meet the community’s needs.

Operating in somewhat of a medical desert as one of the few primary care facilities of its kind on the Eastside, CarePoint serves residents who would otherwise have to travel to Bellevue or Seattle to receive similar care.

The clinic’s biggest clientele is from North Bend, Jones said, but it treats residents from the Valley, Sammamish, Issaquah and occasionally even South King County.

“We’re moving in the right direction. The services we provide aren’t just meaningful for us, but it’s meaningful to those in our community who are overlooked,” Jones said. “It’s a sense of community I think can feel rare sometimes.”

Since opening in December 2016, the clinic has only shuttered its doors for a short time during the pandemic before it transitioned to a telehealth model.

And it’s not just the uninsured or underinsured who benefit from the clinic, said Operations Director Misty Messer — it’s residents who have switched insurances, have a doctor whose schedule is full, or those in need of a physical who no longer have to worry.

Messer said it is all about helping prevent long-term health challenges that result from deferred doctor visits and keeping patients from making unnecessary, and often expesnive, trips to the emergency room.

The clinic makes sure residents’ prescriptions remain filled. The clinic also connects people with state medicare programs and provides assurance that no large bill will come at the end, she said.

“People are having a hard time finding or getting into primary care right now. They may have a doctor but can’t get in for three months,” she said. “We’re here to help with whatever they need and we don’t ask about money, insurance, citizenship, none of that.”

In the most significant cases, providing accessible care can mean the difference between life and death.

“We had someone walk in off the street in a ton of pain. It was after hours and it ended up being he had acute appendicitis and had to go immediately to the hospital to have surgery,” Messer said. “When I talked to him two weeks later and followed up, he would have not made it. Knowing he could come here and find out it was serious enough to go to the ER, he was very appreciative.”

CarePoint Clinic is located on the SVA Church Campus at 36017 SE Fish Hatchery Road in Fall City. It’s open every Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2 and the second Saturday of the month from 9 a.m. to 1.