The clinic's service area is a federally-designated Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA), meaning it has an "acute shortage of health care providers," and also is a federally-designated Medically Underserved Area (MUA), meaning it lacks the resources "to meet the medical needs of the resident population."

Though organized in 1996 as a tax-exempt Oregon nonprofit corporation, the clinic is the successor of a medical practice reaching back to 1913, when the grandfather of the clinic's Medical Director established a medical practice in Wheeler. Over the ensuing 90 years, three generations of Rinehart family physicians have cared for three generations of north Tillamook County residents.