The Rhode Island Free Clinic has opened a pharmacy, offering about 50 common generic drugs — for free — to its patients.

“This was a huge landmark for us, a real breakthrough in our mission,” says Julie White, the clinic’s director of development. “You can’t talk about primary care without providing the pharmaceuticals. Otherwise it’s just diagnosis, not treatment. ... Now we know we are completing the circle.”

The clinic, based in Providence, offers primary care to uninsured adults who earn less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level (which comes to $27,465 for a year for a family of three). The clinic accepts no government or insurance money, relying entirely on donations and volunteer labor to handle about 2,000 visits a year.

The drugs in the pharmacy, purchased with money raised from foundations, are available only to clinic patients with a prescription from a clinic doctor. It will be open on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, during the clinic’s regular hours, so that patients can have prescriptions filled immediately after seeing a doctor.

The drugs in stock treat the most common conditions: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, back pain, depression and diabetes. For those who need a brand-name drug or a drug not in the formulary, the clinic will help connect them with drug makers’ assistance programs for the poor, or supply them with free samples.

Free Clinic patients are selected in a monthly lottery — a process the clinic hopes to eliminate but still needs because it cannot meet the demand.

At last Thursday’s lottery, 70 people showed up (twice the number seen in the fall); 20 were able to see doctors that night, 20 were scheduled for appointments in the coming days, 20 were referred elsewhere or asked to come back in the future, and 10 were referred to doctors in the community who have agreed to see Free Clinic patients without charging. This network of community doctors is also a recent innovation; so far, 43 doctors have agreed to take on a small number of free clinic patients, and 31 patients have already had appointments, White said. For patients of this new network, doctors will fax the prescription to the free pharmacy, which will mail it to the patient.

The pharmacy is staffed by volunteer pharmacists and managed by Ann Vanhaaren, a pharmacist with Coastal Medical. The Chace Family donated a $140,000 challenge grant, which the clinic has already matched halfway with donations from Caramadre Foundation, the Rhode Island Foundation, Amica Foundation, Ocean State Charities Trust and the Danforth Foundation. Once it raises the full match, it will have the $280,000 needed to operate the pharmacy for a year, White said.

ffreyer@projo.com