PRAIRIE DU SAC, Wis. — A free clinic in Sauk County provides care to anyone who needs it, all thanks to a crew of mostly volunteers. 

The Good Neighbor Clinic has been around since 1999. It’s housed in a space within Sauk Prairie Hospital. 

“We do family practice, we can refer people to specialty a free specialty clinic in Madison if we need to,” said Gretchen Considine, the clinic’s medical director. “We do immunizations, people get medication for $1.” 

They’re open from 1-4 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays. They usually see 10-20 patients per day. 

“A lot of just general family practice stuff,” said Considine. “Diabetes, hypertension, rash, depression… anything you to go to your family doc for, we see it here.” 

Almost the entire staff is made up of volunteers. 

“It’s all volunteer-run, except for we hire for translators, because we see about 75% of the people are Hispanic,” Considine said. “And we have a part time clinic administrator that we hire, but everyone else is volunteer.” 

Many of those volunteers are choosing to spend their days in retirement at the clinic. 

“Some people are here twice a week, every single week. Some people are here once a month,” she said. “We have a couple of RNs that drive like an hour each way to get here to volunteer.” 

While the care they provide is vital to their community, for Considine, it still doesn’t feel like enough. 

“I get discouraged because there's so many more people that really need health care,” she said. “We see people from the Dells, we see people from Reedsburg, Watertown, Beaver Dam.” 

However, for those who need it, once the clock strikes 1 p.m. on Monday or Wednesday, the staff is there for them. 

“It is for people who just fall through the cracks,” said Considine. “There's just a little bit of good that we can do.”