Retired volunteers may need malpractice insurance. (Working at Free Clinics).

Retired physicians across the country are discovering that it can get expensive to volunteer their services at a free clinic.

Dr. Martin Gonzalez, a retired physician in Oak Park, Ill., was turned away from a homeless shelter after he offered his medical services for free. "They said if I didn't have malpractice insurance, I couldn't work for them," he said in an interview.

Discouraged by the news, Dr. Gonzalez said he's trying to find another organization for which he can volunteer. The village of Oak Park is trying to get the state's Good Samaritan law, which protects health care professionals who provide care in emergency situations, to cover retired physicians who want to work, he said.

As Dr. Gonzalez found out, almost all organizations still require that their volunteer physicians have malpractice insurance.

"When they can afford it, organizations will cover the cost," said Gayle Goldin, director of community partnerships with Volunteers in Health Care in New York City; a nonprofit program that assists providers who want to organize volunteerled medical services for the uninsured.

Dr. Gonzalez's situation is indicative of physicians across the country who want to volunteer their time after they retire but can't afford the insurance. Struggles with obtaining and affording malpractice insurance have plagued retirees for at least a decade. But it's worse now with the current malpractice insurance situation.

"Because there's been so much focus on malpractice [insurance], the situation has come to light for volunteer physicians," Ms. Goldin told this newspaper.