After a year-long search for a new family physician, the Laguna Beach Community Clinic has tapped Dr. Farangis Jalali, who joined the Clinic in February.
Jalali is board certified in Family Medicine and previously served at the Riverside University Health System Medical Center. The addition of a physician coincides with a planned modernization of the clinic’s building.
“Modernizing our facility will create greater levels of efficiency, but to really reach peak levels of performance we also needed to grow our medical team,” Dr. Jorge Rubal, CEO and Medical Director for the Laguna Beach Community Clinic, said in a press release.
In addition to regular operations, the Clinic has been approved to distribute, per Orange County guidelines, 100 doses of the Moderna vaccine for COVID-19 per week. So far the Clinic has administered 325 doses, a clinic spokesperson said.
“It’s something we do on a volunteer basis to keep our community healthy,” Rubal said in a press release. “Dr. Jalali joins us at the perfect time, helping us scale up to meet the needs of our community.”
“I’m passionate about public health, patient education, and caring for the health of women,” Jalali said.
The Clinic employs seven providers, joined by six volunteer physicians. It’s a team that’s able to provide a full spectrum of medical care in a variety of languages including, Spanish, French, Farsi and Vietnamese. The Clinic is currently searching for a bilingual Licensed Clinical Social Worker to care for patients struggling with mental health issues.
Dr. Bill Anderson, an emergency medicine specialist, is among the physicians helping treat patients on a weekly basis.
“He’s tremendously respected and loved, so when we learned he was available to serve in a volunteer capacity we jumped at the opportunity,” Rubal said.
Anderson is known by many Laguna Beach residents for his Sleepy Hollow Walk-in-Family Care practice that he operated from 1991 to 2016.
“I started volunteering at the Free Clinic, the forerunner of the [Laguna Beach] Community Clinic, while stationed at El Toro with Dr. [Korey] Jorgenson in the early 70s, so volunteering again feels like coming home. Helping has always been important to me, and I’m glad for the opportunity to continue helping the community I love so much.”
As a federally-certified health center, 51% of the Clinic’s Board of Directors must be patients served by the Clinic. “We recently had a vacancy on the board and turned to Zachery Martin, a patient who has been serving for the past eight months on our finance committee.”
Martin, Senior Vice President with Pacific Mercantile Bank, recounts how he became a patient at the Clinic. “My primary physician, who I’d grown to trust and rely on, had recently retired. I knew Jorge because our kids went to school together so I asked if he would take me on.
“I was looking for what we all want in a primary physician – excellence and a good relationship.” Aside from bringing his expertise to the Clinic’s Finance Committee, Mr. Martin is passionate about supporting the Clinic’s fundraising efforts and sharing its mission.
For more information on the Community Clinic visit lbclinic.org.
