The Good Shepherd Clinic, which provides free medical care to uninsured people in the northern Black Hills, turns 1 year old today. Good Shepherd opened its doors on Feb. 2, 2009, at Our Savior's Lutheran Church and it has continued to do so most Monday evenings since then.

Celebrating its first anniversary is an important milestone for the clinic. Congratulations to clinic organizers and to each of the more than 160 volunteers who helped make the first anniversary possible. Their commitment to providing free health care to the uninsured, and their compassion to care for their community, speaks volumes about the quality of life to be found in Spearfish.

The congregation at Our Savior's and its pastor, the Rev. Kent Stillson, spearheaded the free medical clinic and deserve our gratitude for shepherding it through the first year. Good Shepherd hasn't had to look far to find the medical expertise it needs or the financial support it required. The generous community of Spearfish has provided those necessities from the start. "If we are in need of anything, somebody steps through the door," said clinic board president Helen Merriman.

What hasn't come through the door as readily as hoped in the past year is patients. More than 300 uninsured people have been treated at the clinic, but that's only about half the volume that the clinic is capable of handling. Clinic volunteers can treat up to 25 people per three-hour shift but see, on average, only 12.

Organizers think demand for clinic services may have been limited this first year by a lack of public education about what it does and who it serves. They hope to improve that in 2010.

It's hard for us to imagine that those modest first-year patient numbers mean that few Black Hills area residents lack health insurance, or that not many people here need to take advantage of a free clinic. Given our rising unemployment rates and already high numbers of minimum-wage workers in this area who lack job benefits such as health insurance, we hope the clinic will be increasingly busy in its second year of operation as more people learn about it.

We'd also encourage Good Shepherd to loosen its patient requirements a bit - expanding its geographic service area to include Rapid City's uninsured and even easing those limitations on serving only the uninsured. Many insured people put off seeing a doctor for routine illnesses because they have high deductibles or large co-payments that they can't afford to pay. Sometimes, a free clinic visit might make the difference between paying the rent or buying groceries that week.

Today, as Good Shepherd enters the second year of its mission to "take the light of Christ into the community," we offer our thanks for the hard work of the past year and our hope that clinic volunteers will be even busier in the coming year.