Most health facilities are strategically located near population centers and include five hospitals, eleven health centers, and twelve field clinics. The Navajo Area IHS Office, located in Window Rock, Arizona, administers numerous clinics, health centers, and hospitals, providing health care to 201,583 members of the Navajo Nation. School clinics and Navajo tribal health programs also serve the community. The six hospitals range in size from 39 beds in Crownpoint, New Mexico, to 112 beds at the Gallup Indian Medical Center. Health centers operate full-time clinics, some of which provide emergency services.
Some smaller communities have health stations that operate only part-time.
The NDOH, created in 1977, has the mission of ensuring that quality and culturally acceptable health care is available and accessible to the Navajo people through coordination, regulation, and where necessary, direct service delivery. Approximately three dozen internists work in IHS facilities in New Mexico. The internists are a heterogeneous group providing care at a diverse range of facilities. Those at larger facilities function as fulltime internists. Despite the isolation of many healthcare facilities, the opportunity to work with American Indian communities has attracted outstanding physicians from training programs throughout the country to New Mexico for decades.