MARYSVILLE APPEAL-DEMOCRAT (California)

June 11, 2007

Migrant workers gain clinic

By Howard Yune/Appeal-Democrat

A chain of low-cost medical clinics in Northern California will open its next branch among the farms of Colusa County – and pitch itself largely toward the region’s migrant farmworkers.

Del Norte Clinics Inc. is launching a medical and dental center in Arbuckle, Lawrence Fong, the chief executive, announced last week.

The clinic is slated to open by December, with one physician and one dentist occupying a new 7,000-square-foot building on Putnam Way.

A $608,333 grant that the Yuba City-based nonprofit group won from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services paved the way for the Arbuckle clinic, covering more than half the estimated $1 million startup cost.

The grant program is directed at health-care enterprises in rural areas with little hospital service – something Fong said made southwest Colusa County a natural place to do business. (Another Del Norte center operates in Colusa, some 25 miles away.)

An Arbuckle clinic would be a rare full-time medical presence for the county, whose towns are at least 10 miles from the county’s only hospital, Colusa Regional Medical Center.

Del Norte Clinics runs 14 medical and dental clinics in Colusa, Sutter, Yuba, Butte and Glenn counties.