Mission:
Operation Access (OA) enables Bay Area health care providers to donate vital surgical and specialty care to people in need.
Vision:
We envision health care equity for people facing barriers to care.
Guiding Principles:
Every person should have access to specialty care when s/he needs it.
Physicians and nurses want to give back to their local community.
The entire community is well served when those most vulnerable receive care.
While the Affordable Care Act has enabled many low-income individuals to qualify for Medi-Cal or subsidized insurance coverage, many people in the Bay Area remain uninsured. People who are simply trying to make ends meet . To provide for their families. To care for their children.
Operation Access continues its commitment to improving the lives of our neighbors in need and to providing meaningful local volunteer opportunities for medical professionals.
Our Story
Operation Access, founded in 1993, grew out of the recognition that many San Francisco residents did not have access to elective surgical or specialty care because they had no insurance and limited financial means. Using foreign medical volunteer programs as a model, Bill Schecter, MD, Doug Grey, MD, and Paul Hofmann, DrPH, set out to build OA as a domestic volunteer alternative. From its beginning in San Francisco with a handful of volunteers working in a single hospital, Operation Access has grown to serve all nine Bay Area counties.
Over the years, our partnership with health care providers has grown to include more than 1500 volunteer medical professionals, 40 hospitals and ambulatory care centers, and 20 medical groups that provide outpatient surgical procedures and diagnostic screenings to patients referred from more than 80 community clinics.
