Free Fall City health clinic launches mobile unit

Fall City’s CarePoint Clinic held a ribbon cutting Feb. 26 for its new mobile unit, a service that will expand its already growing range of care.

CarePoint, a nonprofit and free health clinic, opened on the Snoqualmie Valley Alliance Church campus in 2016. Since 2022, the clinic has been ramping back up from its pandemic-era setback and had a large growth spurt in 2024, with nearly 500 appointments. CarePoint’s goal is to serve anyone who needs healthcare, regardless of status or insurance, but Executive Director Misty Messer understands Fall City isn’t the best location for all Valley residents.

Now, with the addition of the mobile clinic, CarePoint can come to those people instead.

“Just because something is available does not mean it’s accessible,” Messer said. “Everyone should be able to access free healthcare, but if they can’t get to our physical location, for all the different numbers of reasons, it actually isn’t accessible. So we knew from the beginning that we were going to need to have a model that brought us individually to each of the small towns in the Valley.”

The mobile unit, a Winnebago RV, has two exam rooms, a lab for drawing blood and a restroom. It was purchased with a grant from the Washington State Health Care Authority, and CarePoint designed the interior from scratch.

Messer isn’t sure yet what the mobile unit’s schedule will be. While the staff gets the hang of things, she said, there will likely be one community clinic every few weeks. The goal is to have those clinics at rotating spots around the Valley, but CarePoint needs to build its list of partner organizations to park the Winnebago at.

“It’s not only about what we can do. It’s about finding the partners, finding the people and the other organizations,” she said. “We need the community to be behind us, so that we aren’t just rolling in and steamrolling and being like, here we are. So that is a really slow and methodical process.”

Aside from Messer and two other staffers who all work part time, CarePoint is run entirely on medical volunteers, which adds another layer to scheduling. But eventually, Messer wants the mobile unit to host a couple of clinics per week.

The next hurdle, Messer said, is finding ways to pay for upkeep of the mobile unit. Most funding comes from private donors, grants and the occasional fundraiser, but that isn’t necessarily enough when each clinic hosted by CarePoint costs about $2,000, she said.

Messer’s goal is to build more relationships with business sponsors, hopefully increasing both funding and visibility.

“That tells the community that someone in their community is buying into their health, to the health of the community,” she said. “We’re not one of the big guys, we’re not as well known and visible as some of the other, bigger nonprofits that have that model already, but we think we have a pretty compelling resource that people will be interested in.”

CarePoint offers a lot of care, including wellness exams, disease management, acute care and sports physicals. Two to three times a year, CarePoint has dental clinics where patients can receive everything from cleanings to extractions. Twice a month, there are physical therapy clinics, which Messer said focus on preventing injury as much as healing from it.

CarePoint also has referral partners for nearly 30 medical specialities.

“I pretty much tell people, unless it’s a stroke or a heart attack or massive bleeding, come to us and we’ll either fix it ourselves, or we will refer you to partners who can handle it,” Messer said. “Our goal, especially with our clients and our patients, is that they come to us so that we can help them walk through it, as opposed to them assuming that we aren’t going to be able to help and then they’re out there trying to do it on their own.”

Though CarePoint is not yet ready to venture out of the Valley, it has patients coming in from all over King County, some from Snohomish County, and even has a couple of patients from Cle Elum, Messer said.

“We know that it is a broad need from a really large geographical area,” she said. “We know that, eventually, that need may take us outside the valley because there are other locations. Even places that seem like they should have all of the resources, they don’t.”

In the meantime, Messer and her team will continue working to make healthcare as accessible as possible to their community, in the Valley and out.

“Healthcare is such a fundamental right,” Messer said. “In our mind, it’s not a privilege for people to have access to healthcare. It should be available to everyone.”

Check it out: CarePoint’s brick and mortar clinic is open Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and the second Saturday of the month from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Walk-ins are welcome. To schedule an appointment and for more information, go to carepointonline.org.

Helene Wentink, communication and development director for Empower Youth Network, speaks to the crowd at CarePoint’s ribbon cutting, Feb. 26, 2025. From left: Wentink; Andrea Pitman, CarePoint clinic manager; Misty Messer, CarePoint executive director; Darcy Dinwiddie, Carnation Chamber of Commerce director; Todd Wright, CarePoint medical director. Grace Gorenflo/Valley Record