White Bird's devoted doctor departing.

Byline: TIM CHRISTIE The Register-Guard

After 19 years caring for the poor, homeless and uninsured, Dr. Michael Weinstein is leaving White Bird Clinic, but he's not leaving indigent care.

Friday was Weinstein's last day at the Eugene clinic, where he's served as medical director since late 1983.

Weinstein said he plans to spend more time working on communitywide solutions to indigent care. And he'll continue working half time at the Urgent Care center at PeaceHealth's downtown clinic.

"I feel like it's time," he said. "I think being outside White Bird gives me a better opportunity to do things politically in indigent care."

Wearing denim scrubs under his white lab coat and a pair of well-worn cowboy boots, Weinstein talked in the cramped break room at Urgent Care about his career and future plans.

The New York City native earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Washington and his medical degree at State University of New York. He has always been attracted to helping those most in need - he started up three free clinics in Seattle before alighting at White Bird - and figures he's devoted more than half his 50 years to indigent care.

"At least one piece of him is a rebel," said Bob Dritz, White Bird's clinic coordinator, "not comfortable with the way our society works and the way services are available to some people and not to others."

"He has the warmest heart of anyone I've ever met," said Candace Barr, executive director of the Lane County Medical Society.

"There aren't a lot of people that really have the passion for the indigent like Mike does. I'm sorry we'll lose that."

White Bird is among the last of the hippie-era free clinics. Every morning people who have nowhere else to turn line up for its walk-in clinic. Most have no insurance. Many are homeless. Some are caught up in addiction or mental illness.

When he arrived in Eugene in late 1983, the clinic was in a small house on 12th Street. The waiting room was the living room. The kitchen was the lab and pharmacy. A single bedroom was partitioned into two exam rooms without enough room for Weinstein to sit.

The clinic now occupies an old house at 1400 Mill St.

The collegiality and cooperation of Eugene doctors willing to serve the indigent community made his job "a heck of a lot easier," Weinstein said. He figures the more than 100,000 outpatient visits at White Bird in the past 20 years have leveraged millions of dollars worth of care from local hospitals, labs and doctors.

"A lot of the success of White Bird is the medical community and radiologists and labs that have done a lot of pro bono work," he said.

Weinstein's long tenure at White Bird has helped bring stability to the nonprofit clinic, said Dritz.

"To have a doctor committing a good part of his life, almost two decades to doing this work, means we could have stability and build services and extend services instead of continually re-inventing the program," he said.

In addition to the medical clinic, White Bird operates other programs, including a mobile crisis intervention team, drug and alcohol treatment programs and a dental clinic. Altogether, White Bird programs serve 15,000 to 20,000 people and provide 70,000 client contacts a year, Dritz said.

White Bird will install an interim medical director while a committee conducts a long-term search for someone to replace Weinstein, Dritz said.

"I can only hope we find someone who will last as long as he did," Dritz said. "We want to build a new version of medical services around a new physician."

Weinstein plans to stay busy. He serves on a number of committees focusing on health care for indigent and uninsured people. His goal is to get a federally funded community health center in Eugene.

He envisions it as a "much bigger White Bird" that would be a central spot to deal with indigent care problems. It would be better organized administratively than White Bird, he said, yet ideally still have flexibility built in, a place "that would still break the rules 5 percent of the time."

Part of him will miss White Bird, which he called "a great practice."

"The medical part was fabulous," he said. "The need was high. The people were uniformly grateful. You could majorly impact people's lives."

CAPTION(S):

On his last day at White Bird Clinic in Eugene on Friday, Dr. Michael Weinstein (left) checks retired uranium miner Fred Hamilton's lungs. "The need was high. The people were uniformly grateful." - DR. MICHAEL WEINSTEIN, departing White Bird physician