City: Santa Fe, NM

Category: Health Care

Telephone: (505) 438-3195

Address: 1035 Alto St. (downtown)

Description: La Familia truly is a community health center. The clinics provide primary medical care from obstetrics to geriatrics. The nonprofit medical center is the primary deliverer of babies in the community. Both locations have dental clinics that take Medicaid patients. Between them, the two clinics employ 41 medical personnel, including doctors, family nurse practitioners, nurses, and lab personnel; nine are on the dental staff. La Familia’s health providers recognize the validity of alternative medicine and respect its cultural importance, particularly to Hispanic and Native American patients. They often incorporate alternative therapies into patients’ health-care plans, referring them outside if La Familia doesn’t offer a particular treatment.La Familia started in 1972 as a little neighborhood clinic in a building it shared with a day-care center on Santa Fe’s west side. Today it operates two full-time, stand-alone medical centers. It leases each building from the city of Santa Fe for $1 a year. At last count the center had 9,800 registered patients. The majority—53 percent—is uninsured, relying either on the county indigent fund or La Familia’s sliding-fee scale. A number of patients who can afford to go elsewhere choose La Familia for its quality comprehensive health care. The clinics ask for a minimum payment, though they will provide services to anyone who walks in their doors, regardless of ability to pay. They accept all forms of insurance and contract with HMOs to provide medical care for their patients. La Familia also operates a number of outstanding community outreach programs, including “Promotoras,” which promotes community health education through lay advisors. Promotoras provide information on such topics as prenatal care, diabetes, child immunization, asthma, and breast-feeding, including teaching working mothers how to pump their breast milk to leave with their children’s caregiver.Both clinics are open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday, until 6 p.m. on the South Side; closed the first Wednesday morning of each month. The centers accept walk-in patients but ask that you try to call ahead so the staff can fit you into the best available appointment slot or, if one isn’t available, send you to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center.