30 Years Later, The Salvation Army Clinics are Still Serving Rochester
Dr. Charles Kennedy is known within The Salvation Army as one of the founders of what is now called The Salvation Army Good Samaritan Medical Clinic. But 30 years ago, he says he simply saw a need and helped where he could. “There was never a plan for the clinic to grow into what it is today. The need kept growing, and the clinic grew with it.”
In the early 1990s, Dr. Kennedy attended church with a Salvation Army board member. That board member connected him with the Salvation Army staff member who coordinated an Adult Day Program, a service for elderly and disabled individuals. Dr. Kennedy says his experience in internal medicine at Mayo Clinic allowed him to be of help to the program here and there. “There was a nurse practitioner on staff, and every once in a while, she would call me if one of her day program clients needed to be seen by a physician. I was unofficially on call.”
At this time in Rochester, there was a significant influx of immigrants, people who faced several barriers to healthcare, from health insurance to language barriers.
Dr. Kennedy witnessed this in his professional life at Mayo Clinic, but another two physicians who noticed this trend were Dr. Robert Stanhope and Dr. Jarrett Richardson.
Dr. Stanhope and Dr. Richardson had approached the County Attorney and Olmsted County Public Health to ask if there was a way they could use the Olmsted County Public Health Offices to treat patients. Both physicians happened to attend the same church as Dr. Kennedy, so when plans to provide care in the public health offices were not approved, Dr. Kennedy suggested that the three of them reach out to The Salvation Army.
“People really came out of the woodwork,” said Dr. Kennedy, “Doctors, pharmacists, I just couldn’t believe how people showed up.” The clinic was called The Salvation Army Free Acute Care Clinic. It first opened its doors to patients in February 1995.
The earliest volunteers in the clinic used the second floor of The Salvation Army Corps Community Center building in downtown Rochester to provide one acute care clinic a week. Dr. Kennedy recounted the experience of providing “cowboy medicine.” Volunteers would use curtain dividers hung from the ceiling to create pseudo-exam rooms.
“In the very beginning, we couldn’t guarantee we would have the medications patients would need. Then, a local pharmacist who still lives here in Rochester told us that, if we had a patient who needed a medication that we didn’t have, that he would pay for that medication at his cost.”
The clinic was open exclusively to walk-in patients, first once a week, then quickly growing to twice a week as the need increased. As the medical clinic grew, volunteers began to notice a need amongst their patients for dental care, too.
“With the medical clinic, all we really needed was the expertise of the physicians and the medications for patients after their visits, but with dental care, we needed equipment and a space dedicated to dentistry before we could provide that service. The dental clinic as we know it now did not exist until The Salvation Army rented a space from Mayo Clinic.”
The space in question would much later be developed into the Caribou Coffee right across the street from Saint Mary’s Hospital. Mayo Clinic had acquired the land and the building on it, but had not yet developed it. They agreed to rent it to The Salvation Army for $1 a year.
“This was in the wintertime, and we were fortunate that the head of the construction union in Rochester was on the board at the time. He worked with lots of union men in town who didn’t have as much work that time of year to completely renovate the space so that it could be a dental clinic,” said Dr. Kennedy.
Union workers donated over $100,000 worth of equipment and labor to the effort, so that very little expense for the renovation was left to The Salvation Army.
“Dr. Joe Gibilisco was a dentist at Mayo Clinic. He was a huge help,” said Dr. Kennedy. Dr. Gibilisco was well-connected in the dental community, and was instrumental in building the space for the dental clinic, as well as building the volunteer base needed to provide services in the clinic.
“Dr. Gibilisco could see the need and he could see that the emergency room was not the best place for dental emergencies to be seen,” said Dr. Bernard Bouquet, another of the founding Good Samaritan Dental Clinic dentists, “Prior to the dental clinic, Olmsted Medical Center had a room for treating dental emergencies.”
A group of local dentists shared the responsibility of being on call, treating emergency dental patients at the OMC hospital. This lasted for a couple of years. Logistically, it was difficult to see patients in a foreign setting that was not set up specifically for dentistry. “There were weekends when you could get called in 4 or 5 or 6 times or more,” said Dr. Bouquet.
When Dr. Gibilisco, Dr. Bouquet, Dr. Joe Becker and Dr. Thomas Sitzer, two other local dentists, learned that Mayo Clinic had agreed to arrange a space for a dental clinic with The Salvation Army, that’s when the Good Samaritan Dental Clinic really took shape. These dentists helped to identify and locate the equipment needed in a dental space, and were able to get most of it donated.
“I remember being told at a Salvation Army board meeting as this clinic was being planned that it would never work,” said Dr. Bouquet, “It was the feeling that you would not get dentists to volunteer at a free clinic and it would only last a year or two. I feel the fact that the clinic is still operating is a true testament to the local dental community!”
Successful as both the medical and dental clinic were in their separate spaces, one challenge was having the pharmaceuticals and pharmacy volunteers who served both the medical and dental clinic in a different space than the dental clinic. There were also patients who needed to be seen in both clinics, and the separate spaces meant that patients had to travel across town for care. This all changed when The Salvation Army built the Castleview apartments.
“Early on in the planning process for that building, we learned that the city would not allow us to build residential units on the ground level of the building,” said Doug Coop, business administrator for The Salvation Army, “As soon as we learned that, it was pretty instantaneous that we next started planning to use the ground level of the building as a dedicated space for the medical and dental clinics, and the pharmacy.”
The Salvation Army broke ground in 2007 and opened the Castleview building to residents and patients in 2009. Dental clinic patients had quick access to antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals in the same facility where they had dental procedures, and the medical clinic quickly began to expand.
“When the medical clinic first opened, it was only providing acute care,” said Dr. Kennedy, “But under the direction of Dr. Robert Stroebel, Dr. Thomas McLeod, and Dr. Allison Ducharme-Smith, all Mayo Clinic physicians who volunteered their time, it has really grown to be a series of specialty clinics for chronic disease management.”
In addition to the tooth extractions and other emergent dental care provided at the clinic, specialty clinics now include acute care, pediatrics, cardiology, neurology, diabetes and hypertension, rheumatology, ophthalmology, and a breast clinic in partnership with SAGE.
When asked about the patients who rely on The Salvation Army medical and dental clinics, Dr. Kennedy shared, “our patients really changed my thinking. I thought I was going to be working with penniless people, but in fact, they were working very hard.
“One of the first patients I treated in the clinic had a seizure disorder. He couldn’t afford his seizure medications, but if he kept having seizures, he would lose his job.”
The medical and dental clinics combined now serve over 3,000 patients every year in Olmsted County alone. The dental clinic has seen an increase to over 700 new patient visits in the last year, and the medical clinic nearly doubled its new patient numbers in 2024.
The increased need for accessible healthcare in the community is paired with increased numbers in other Salvation Army programs. “In 2024, we saw an increase in the number of people coming to us for support across every single one of our services,” said Major Candace Voeller, Corps Officer at The Salvation Army, “It’s housing support, it’s food security, and it’s absolutely healthcare.
“We hope people will recognize how important it is that no one in our community have to make choices between their utility bill and their insulin, or between living in dental pain and paying their grocery bill. Our clinic helps to ensure that people don’t have to make those choices.”
“There’s a Wordsworth poem about a beggar where everyone initially feels quite sorry for this person, when in actuality, he enriched the lives of others by giving them the chance to share,” said Dr. Kennedy, “The patients who come to the clinic are not beggars. They go to work, they try their best to provide for their families, and they contribute to this community in a way that enriches life for all of us.
“Looking back, we didn’t set out to build a clinic that would have this long-lasting legacy. We just saw that people needed help, and everyone really showed up to help.”
The Salvation Army hosts Taste of the Town every year to support these efforts here in Rochester. To learn more about the ways you can support the continued work of The Salvation Army dental clinic, medical clinic, and pharmacy, including tickets to Taste of the Town, please visit www.rochestersa.org or call 507-288-3663.