MIDVALE, Utah — Dr. Mansoor Emam's second "Field of Dreams" sprouted Wednesday as he opened another medical clinic to treat the ever-growing population of Utah's working poor, who can't get treatment without health insurance.
Dedication services for the New Hope Clinic, at 65 E. 6850 South, included a prayer by Elder Russell M. Nelson, a member of the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve. He thanked God for the facility, which has been "conceived and created by compassionate, competent and caring citizens in their desire to help their less fortunate brothers and sisters."
The clinic, which has been dubbed a "new baby sister" to the Maliheh Free Clinic in South Salt Lake, is the second privately-funded health-care facility in Salt Lake County, designed to provide primary care services to the uninsured.
Emam, an emergency room physician at Intermountain Medical Center, and nurse Jane Powers co-founded the Maliheh Free Clinic five years ago. Their vision to expand services was facilitated by the late John Holmes, a developer and homebuilder who was a contributor to the Maliheh Clinic.
Holmes met Emam as a patient in the emergency room, and after the doctor's persistence in treating his heart condition, he offered to help fund Emam's desire to provide free medical care to those in need.
Holmes died a few years ago, "and his wife asked me to do this (create the New Hope Clinic) in his honor. We remodeled his office and it's a brand new clinic now." The Holmes family donated the office space, the cost of the remodeling and two-thirds of the operating costs, Emam said.
The volunteer medical and clerical staff will focus care on the uninsured and underserved "that are not homeless," according to Emam. Clinic hours are Tuesday and Wednesday from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m.
Patients will receive pediatric care one day, and dental/oral surgeon services on the other, he said.
Staff will also work to help patients find other means of support. "One day a week, we'll have a group of local businessmen interested in helping us with teaching our patients about tax returns, micro-loan management, how to avoid being scammed by payday lenders, immigration issues, getting insurance, and getting them established with Medicare or Medicaid or CHIP.
"There are quite a few people who qualify for those, but they're not aware of them and don't know how to apply."
As for staffing, volunteer help will not be hard to come by. "For this clinic, we have over 120 people already signed up — nurses, clerks, translators, physicians. They're already to go with this."
Just as the Maliheh Clinic operates on volunteer labor, Emam said he's learned if "I provide the infrastructure" in the form of a clinical setting, "the volunteers will come." If it sounds like the philosophy behind the film, "Field of Dreams," that's exactly what's happened with Mansoor's vision to provide payback for the opportunities he's had in America.
The Iranian-born immigrant who went to medical school at the University of Utah said his dream was to provide access to medical care for those who wouldn't otherwise have it. His small hometown in southern Iran offered few options for the sick, and Emam is how expanding his dream to the New Hope Clinic with Powers' help.
The dream that first sprouted years ago in the emergency room, as they saw the working poor crowd in when preventable disease had finally overtaken them and they had no other options.
The success of the Maliheh model has given Emam credibility within the local business and humanitarian communities, and his employer — Intermountain Healthcare — has long been supportive of his efforts, he said.
Many of the donors and board members came to know Emam through a visit to the emergency room. "These are all my patients — people I have known for two decades. They're basically joining me to help me. I volunteer to give the medical care, connect the dots and the organization."
Emam estimates between 500 and 1,000 people have served at the Maliheh Clinic without pay over the years.
"Once the infrastructure is there, people will come to serve and then hopefully go do something themselves for someone else. We're really planting the seed, basically."
e-mail: carrie@desnews.com