Martha’s Village and Kitchen Medical Clinic, a Licensed Community Clinic, has been serving homeless and uninsured patients in the Coachella Valley since March 2002. The clinic is supported entirely by donations and grants, all services are free to eligible patients.

The clinic is open Monday – Friday from 8:30 AM -5:00 PM where medical care is provided under the clinical guidance of Krista Burris Kim MD. Dr. Burris Kim, Medical Director, is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, and Dr. Michael Kim, Associate Medical Director specializes in Family Practice and Psychiatry. Supplementing the clinic staff are four Board Certified volunteer physicians, an optometrist, pediatric residents from Loma Linda University, and nursing students from College of the Desert, a full-time registered nurse specializing in wound care, and three medical assistants.

During the last 12 months, the clinic served:

• 2,094 unduplicated patients through 6,747 scheduled office visits.
  
  
• Accommodated 5,051 triage visits for individuals that otherwise may have ended up in local emergency rooms. Only 66 persons were referred to an emergency room during that period for medical care beyond the scope of the clinic’s capabilities.
  
  
• Dispensed 12,452 prescriptions. The majority of medications were for management of diabetes, asthma, anxiety, depression and hypertension.
  
  
• Administered 597 TB screenings and 700 flu shots.
  
  
• 779 individuals participated in three vision screening clinics.
  
  
• 699 pairs of prescription glasses were dispensed.
  

Homeless persons, infants and children, without housing are in fair or poor health twice as often as other children and have four times the rate of asthma, higher rates of anxiety and depression, and lower rates of childhood immunizations. Mothers who are homeless have more acute and chronic health problems than the general population of females under 45 years of age having chronic asthma, depression and anxiety related disorders more than four times the general population rate, and anemia at ten times the general population rate.
Clinical performance related to preventative cre and chronic disease management goals include HbA1c control in patients with diabetes hypertension control, Pap testing, mammography screening, and colorectal cancer screenings.