Stanford and Samaritan House

When Baldeep Singh, MD, a clinical professor of medicine at Stanford, became medical director of Samaritan House’s two free clinics in San Mateo County, he didn’t expect most days to feel like an episode of MacGyver.

The television character was famous for solving seemingly impossible problems with whatever tools he had on hand.

At Samaritan House, Singh found plenty of challenges that demanded the same kind of improvised ingenuity. Over the last three years, he scrambled to secure affordable insulin, brought an AI diabetic eye camera to the clinics, rebuilt post-COVID operations, and recruited Stanford specialists to deliver hospital-level care in a free clinic.

“Every day we have problems that need to be figured out,” Singh says. “We all feel like we’re MacGyver.”

As medical director, Singh was charged with helping build a new partnership between Stanford Medicine and Samaritan House. He and his team were tasked with translating that vision into day-to-day patient care, laying the groundwork for a new model that integrated Stanford’s physicians, students, and resources into an established community clinic.

For decades, Stanford’s student-run clinics gave medical students early experience caring for uninsured and underinsured patients while providing free weekend care across the Bay Area. The clinics offered valuable training and expanded access to care, but because they operated one day a week in borrowed community spaces, patients often had no clear path for follow-up appointments, medication management, or specialty referrals. Stanford leaders began asking whether the model could become something more enduring.

That vision traces back nearly a decade to Dean Lloyd Minor, who challenged Stanford leaders and students to rethink the future of the university’s student-run clinics. Rather than creating another standalone weekend clinic, they envisioned integrating students and faculty into an existing community medical home. Finding the right partner, however, took years.

Earning Community Trust

Stanford also changed how it approached community organizations. Rather than beginning with research opportunities or student training, faculty leaders started with a different question: What do the community members need?

Community leaders had a straightforward answer: More doctors.

Stanford responded by placing faculty physicians in community organizations throughout the Bay Area. One of those organizations was Samaritan House. When Samaritan House’s longtime medical director retired, its leaders turned to Stanford. Singh accepted the role.

The partnership did not happen overnight. Community organizations were understandably cautious about Stanford’s intentions, wondering whether the university was there to serve the community or simply conduct research. Singh and Sang-ick Chang, MD, say that Stanford spent years rebuilding clinic operations, expanding services, and demonstrating that it was committed to bringing Stanford’s clinical expertise into the community before Samaritan House became the permanent home for the university’s student-run clinics.

“We are growing up from being a largely research-focused organization to becoming a full anchor institution in our community,” says Chang, clinical professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Primary Care and Population Health. “Leading with service is what this program demonstrates.”

Strengthening Community Care

This spring, Samaritan House and Stanford formalized their partnership into part of a medical home where patients who arrive on Sunday can return throughout the week for primary care, prescription medications, specialty services, and follow-up through a single system.

Today, Stanford faculty and students provide care on Sundays as part of that larger system. The partnership adds roughly 2,000 patient visits each year. Samaritan House now relies on a Stanford volunteer corps of more than 50 clinicians, and annual visits have nearly doubled, growing from about 6,000 to 12,000 over the last three years, Singh says.

The model has also strengthened medical education. Rather than volunteering at a stand-alone weekend clinic, students now train inside a functioning community medical home, where they see firsthand how healthcare intersects with housing, food insecurity, and other realities that shape patients’ lives. It has become one of Stanford’s most sought-after opportunities for pre-med undergraduates, with about 200 students competing each year for 60 volunteer positions.

“It definitely gives meaning to what I am doing in the classroom,” says Luciana, an undergraduate volunteer. “In the classroom it is mostly technical work … but here you come and see the realities of people, and you get more motivated to do what you do and to learn more.”

Singh says the years of work have helped Samaritan House become a “tremendously better resource,” where patients can receive free primary care, free prescription medications, specialty services, and ongoing follow-up treatment through a single system.

“We feel like we’re doing a better job, the students feel like they’re getting a better experience, and the patients are definitely getting better care,” Singh says. “And on a weekend.”