Grand Rapids' Access of West Michigan opens Michigan's largest free health clinic, a 12,000-square-foot facility offering primary care, dental, and mental health services to 60,000 uninsured residents.
Access of West Michigan opened the doors to what organizers are calling Michigan’s largest free health clinic Wednesday, launching a 12,000-square-foot facility in Grand Rapids that will provide no-cost primary care, dental services, mental health counseling, and chronic disease management to uninsured and underinsured residents of Kent, Ottawa, and Allegan counties — an estimated patient population of more than 60,000 people who currently lack adequate access to health services.
The new Heartside Health Center, located in Grand Rapids’ Heartside neighborhood — one of the city’s highest-poverty areas — was built through a $9.4 million capital campaign that drew funding from Spectrum Health, Priority Health, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and more than 800 individual donors from across West Michigan. The facility is staffed by a combination of seven full-time clinical employees and a network of over 140 volunteer physicians, dentists, nurses, and mental health professionals who donate weekly clinic time.
“No one in West Michigan should go without a doctor because they can’t afford it,” said Access of West Michigan Executive Director Kevin Murphy. “This building is a statement that this community believes health care is a right, not a privilege. Today we back up that statement with 12,000 square feet of action.”
The clinic will operate six days per week with evening hours available three nights a week to accommodate patients who work during standard business hours. Patients can schedule appointments online or by phone in English, Spanish, or Arabic, reflecting the linguistic diversity of the community it serves. Interpreter services in 14 additional languages are available for walk-in patients.
Among the clinic’s key capabilities is a full-service dental suite with six operatories capable of serving approximately 4,000 dental patients per year — a dramatic expansion of Access of West Michigan’s prior dental program, which operated from a single operatory and had a wait list exceeding 18 months. Dental care access is a particular gap in the region, with only a small fraction of local dentists accepting Medicaid or providing sliding-scale fees.
Mental health services at the clinic include individual therapy, medication management for psychiatric conditions, and a group therapy program designed specifically for survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking — populations that local advocates say are significantly underserved in the current system.
The facility is expected to serve approximately 9,000 patients in its first year of full operation and plans to expand hours and services in year two based on demand and volunteer capacity growth.
