Clinic transcends insurance

‘Calloused’ doc was ‘undone’ seeing students’ compassion

By Art Toalston

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“No, no, no, no. I’ve got other plans.”

But it appears that a higher power wouldn’t take “no” for an answer from Tim Henschel.

Mercy Children’s Clinic now is the evidence of Henschel’s disrupted plans – a pediatric facility in a renovated carpet showroom and warehouse near downtown Franklin with a readiness to care for uninsured and underinsured children. The clinic, situated between a struggling neighborhood with government housing and picturesque streets with historic homes that cost a small fortune, is on a mission: “To reflect the love and compassion of Jesus Christ by providing health care services for all children and support to their families.”

A video prompted Henschel’s failed protest in the spring of 1998 when he was a pediatric resident at Vanderbilt Medical Center and a youth volunteer at Franklin’s Christ Community Church.

The video, from a camp where high school students were giving individual attention to kids with severe physical and emotional disabilities, was shown at a youth workers’ conference Henschel was attending.

“The video was talking about how to get your youth group involved in really serving others. … God used that and just undid me in watching those students care for kids that, quite honestly as a pediatric resident, I had become calloused to. I didn’t really want to care for these kids anymore.

“The word I use is ‘undone.’ I was undone. It was amazing for me to see students loving those kids as well as they did. It was just an amazing picture of Christ. That probably was what really got to me.

“And I was praying, ‘Lord, what is it that you want me to do?’ And he said he wanted me to start a clinic in Franklin for kids like these.”

Henschel’s multiple-“no” refusal didn’t deter God from repeating the call: “I want you to start a clinic in Franklin and I want you to care for kids like these.”

“So that’s where the vision really began, in hearing the voice of God saying something that was so far outside of me that I knew it had to be him. If you had asked my residency class, ‘Who is least likely to start a clinic for underserved kids?’ they would have pointed to me. One hundred percent would have said, ‘He’s the guy who’s going to stay around and do research. He’s not a primary care doc.’

“Ultimately what I came to recognize is that God was saying, ‘I want you to care for ‘the least of these,’” akin to Christ’s words in Matthew 25:40.

Henschel said he is “amazed at how God has used my weakness to see lives impacted here at Mercy.”

More than 7,500 children along with youth up to age 18 have traveled from 24 counties to receive medical care at Mercy Children’s Clinic through 50,000-plus visits since it opened on Nov. 1, 1999, with about 15 percent of the patients from uninsured families, 60 percent from families on the Medicaid-related TennCare program and the remainder covered by commercial insurance.

“One of our little taglines is, ‘Both health care and heart care.’” — Tim Henschel

The clinic now has more than 30 staff members, including five pediatric physicians who see 55 to 60 patients a day, a director of family services, two family counselors and a part-time child psychiatrist. The staff begins each morning with a time of prayer for various needs and concerns that children and parents have asked to be written on the clinic’s “prayerboard.”

A waiting room accented with primary colors now occupies the former carpet showroom; 12 exam rooms, two nurses stations and a lab are on the ground floor of the former warehouse, which was tall enough for a second-floor addition for office and meeting space.

About 42 percent of the nonprofit clinic’s $2.6 million yearly budget comes from donations, grants and four annual fundraisers, such as the Franklin Classic, a 10k and 5k run, 4k walk and a Kids’ Kilometer that draw about 3,000 participants and several thousand onlookers.

As many as 150 volunteers from the community help in the clinic’s office over the course of a year, tackling painting and upkeep needs, handling various mailings, checking to make sure that children have had regular checkups and searching the Internet to help answer some of the questions parents raise about child development. Meanwhile, about 300 volunteers are involved with the clinic’s fundraisers.

Mercy Children’s Clinic “doesn’t look or feel like a facility primarily for kids who are uninsured or underinsured,” said Henschel, a Wisconsin native and graduate of Wheaton College near Chicago who studied at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. “It’s designed to look and feel just as nice and run just as well as any for-profit practice, except that it’s a ministry.”

While families with regular insurance give the clinic a financial boost, Henschel said they also help fulfill its vision for a “diversity of patient population that is not just racially diverse but also socioeconomically diverse.”

As a ministry, Mercy Children’s Clinic can devote more time to holistic care, often in addressing other needs or providing services to children and their families that most clinics can’t provide, Henschel said. The clinic’s doctors, he added, “don’t have the same pressures with regard to the number of patients they have to see in a day. We’re really able to provide a different type of care here. One of our little taglines is, ‘Both health care and heart care.’ I can’t take credit for it, but it really does exemplify what we do day-in and day-out.”

Well-child visits, Henschel said, are a key focus of the ministry, especially during the slower summer months. “The more we’re able to teach them the importance of accessing well care,” he said, “the more we’re able to actually impact their lives long-term … whether it’s a teenager who needs to talk about making good choices or a parent of a 2-year-old who needs to talk about how to teach a child how to make good choices.

“The term in pediatric lingo is ‘anticipatory guidance,’ that we want to anticipate the kind of guidance we need to provide,” Henschel said, noting, “Our patient base oftentimes doesn’t get such help. They’re used to accessing the doctor when a child is sick but not when they’re well.”

The clinic extends its proactive approach via its family and counseling services, housed in a former residence adjacent to the clinic.

“Holistic care is not just making sure your ears are not infected or your blood pressure is good, but it’s understanding that kids don’t grow up in a vacuum – they grow up in a family,” Henschel said. “The simple reality is that if we take care of kids here and they go back to a place that’s unhealthy and continues to be unhealthy, the kids come back and keep coming back and coming back, and we don’t get anywhere.”

Although much of the clinic’s social assistance to families entails referrals to other community resources, one foundation helps with prescription costs for families without the means to cover such expenses while various donors provide a number of grocery store gift cards for families unable to afford both food and health care.

Mental health, meanwhile, “is probably the area where we’re currently expanding more than any other,” Henschel said, referencing the ministry’s two fulltime counselors and part-time child psychiatrist.

“Mental health for uninsured and underinsured people in this country is probably one of the greatest needs across the board,” he said, because “the places that exist for uninsured and underinsured people don’t have the resources, typically, to meet mental health needs. It’s not because they don’t want to do the right thing, they do. But there’s just not enough value placed on mental health, I believe, in our culture as a whole.

“If you ever look at an insurance plan, your physical health is usually pretty well covered. But your mental health – if you get a 50 percent co-pay, you’re lucky,” Henschel said, adding that insurance companies typically limit the number of visits they cover. “And you’re just getting started. The rest comes out of your pocket.

“The people who get hit the hardest,” Henschel said, “are the lower socioeconomic, the uninsured especially.”

Overseas missions is another emerging facet of the clinic’s ministry, initially linking up with a clinic in Nairobi, Kenya, where a nurse is serving 1,000 students from two Christian schools situated in one of Africa’s largest slums, with 850,000 people living in a 20-square-mile area.

“I think the base of missions is changing from going to a community for 20-30 years to going for two to three years or four to five years and helping establish something with the community there,” Henschel said. “It’s the community development model being taken to the mission field – [taking] our expertise in providing health care for kids to other parts of the world through resources that other people are already putting together. … It’s coming alongside somebody who is doing community development and says, ‘We have a clinic. Can you help us?’ or ‘We need to start a clinic.’ God will provide those opportunities to us in the right timing, and it is our job to be faithful to evaluate and pray if this is where he is leading us to be.”

Henschel settled on the clinic’s name when a song titled “Cry for Mercy” was sung in church one Sunday morning after his life-changing experience at the youth workers’ conference.

“For me, the longer I do this, the more I see God’s mercy on me. He’s merciful just to let me even do what I get to do. I won’t make it sound like, ‘Oh, it’s milk and honey,’ because it’s not. It’s oftentimes a very hard place to work and a very hard job to do.

“One of the Scriptures that impacted me early on about why we’re doing what we’re doing is, ‘To those who have been given much, much will be required’ (Luke 12:48).

“I used to look at that with a little bit of trepidation until I recognized the fact that God works for my good, not for my bad,” Henschel said. “And if he’s given me much, yes, much will be required. But, again, ultimately it’s for my own good. I rely on that and rest in that and believe that.”

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Art Toalston can be contacted at editor@clusterpaper.com.

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