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Close to home

Medical professionals find a mission field in their own community.

by Melanie Zuercher

When passion for service meets community need, sometimes the result is a health clinic.

At least, that’s what happened in Harvey County, Kansas, a few years after Tim Wiens ’77 had finished medical school and a family practice residency and begun practicing in Newton in 1988.

It didn’t take him long to realize that a significant minority of patients he was seeing – he estimates at least 10 percent – had no medical insurance. These were almost without exception working people, he says: “farmers, truck drivers, waitresses, fast food workers – people who were working at lower wages and weren’t offered health benefits or who were self-employed. I was concerned about [these patients] and how not having insurance impacted their ability to seek care.” He wondered, as well, about those neither he nor any other health-care provider ever saw because of their lack of insurance.

Tim did his residency at Wesley Family Practice in Wichita. “When I came back to my hometown to establish a practice,” he says, “I was unaware how many people didn’t have health insurance. I wanted to do something to help people get the care they needed.

“My wife Kathy ’82 and I had one daughter [Terra, currently a sophomore at Bethel] and she was pregnant with our second daughter and we’d walk in the evening, pushing the stroller and talking about my concerns and what we could do. I have always been interested in mission work and I thought, I should at least start providing for needs right here in Newton.”

At the time, Tim and Kathy were members of New Creation Fellowship, a Mennonite congregation in Newton. Steve Schmidt ’67, then pastor of New Creation, his wife, Wanda ’90, director of the Harvey County Health Department, and others in the congregation shared the Wiens’ concern for health-care needs in the community. Newton had no medical facility that served the uninsured and underinsured. The closest such clinics were in Wichita but, says Tim, “I didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t start one here.”

So in August 1990, he called a meeting and more than 100 people, representing 40 churches and organizations, showed up in the cafeteria of Bethel Deaconess Hospital.

A number of factors were in (or fell into) place to help Health Ministries get off to a good start. One was that Newton had a number of retired Christian doctors, including many Mennonites with mission experience.

Another was that in May 1990, the Kansas Legislature had passed a measure that provided free malpractice coverage for doctors who serve the indigent, which removed a major financial barrier. The law went into effect just before Health Ministries Clinic began operating in spring 1991.

Finally, a locally operating not-for-profit insurance company, Family Health Plan, had recently sold to a for-profit company. One of the terms of sale required putting the profits into a foundation that gave health-care grants. The first grant money was available starting right when Health Ministries was forming.

“The grant proposal deadline was the first of September [1990] and here it was the end of August,” Tim remembers. “The ad hoc board came up with a rough proposal to start an indigent health-care clinic run with volunteer doctors and health-care providers – and we got the whole $30,000, dependent on us getting organized into a 501c3 legal organization.” Local attorney Marilyn Wilder drew up the legal charter that allowed Health Ministries of Harvey County to claim nonprofit status. Steve Schmidt became the first board chair.

The Harvey County Health Department provided space rent-free and the clinic opened in May 1991, two mornings and two afternoons a week. “We were probably the only clinic in the state that had all volunteer care providers,” Tim says. He served as the clinic’s first medical director, continuing in that position as a volunteer for a number of years.

Since then, the clinic has grown steadily, particularly in the last several years. After becoming too large for the space at the health department, it now owns its own building a few blocks away and is open during regular business hours five days a week.

In addition to general medical and dental care, the clinic’s services include and minor emergency and outpatient surgical services, mental health counseling and specialized geriatric care. Local hospitals and other clinics also offer services such as lab processing and radiology.

The clinic was exclusively volunteer and served only the low-income uninsured and underinsured until 2005 when, says director Tina Payne, “local stakeholders such as the Harvey County Health Department, Newton Medical Center and the county decided there was growing need for health-care services for other populations, such as Medicaid patients.”

That identified need became the basis for making Health Ministries into a federally qualified health center (FQHC), meaning it can provide care for anyone regardless of income or insurance from Marion, McPherson and Butler Counties in addition to Harvey.Health Ministries now has some paid medical providers, including a half-time pediatrician, a full-time nurse practitioner and an internal medicine physician shared with GraceMed, a community health center in Wichita. Julie Elder ’93, now GraceMed’s medical director, was previously with Health Ministries as a shared physician.

“I attribute the growth to the mounting health-care crisis,” says Payne, “the lack or loss of insurance for people who are gainfully employed but they or their employers can’t afford health coverage. It will be interesting to see what happens in this current economic climate.”

The clinic’s volunteer providers spend about a half-day a month there – some retired physicians give more time, up to a half-day a week. There are currently six volunteer physicians (four practicing, two retired), two nurse practitioners, a licensed clinical social worker (Harry Neufeld ’60, retired from Prairie View Mental Health Services), a dentist and a PRN physician (“works as needed”; Karolyn Cook ’83).

Nurse practitioner Valetta Seymour ’68 has been volunteering at Health Ministries Clinic for 17 years. She wasn’t part of the original group that met to form the ministry but soon heard about it. “I felt passionate to help people who don’t have health insurance,” she says. “I believe health care is [everyone’s] right and our system in this country doesn’t meet everyone’s needs.”

Adds Randall Goering ’80, a family physician who currently has the office next door to Tim Wiens at Wichita Clinic-Bethel in Newton, “We have an obligation to provide health care for those who don’t have access.”

All three cite a strong mission and service ethic – from their home congregations when growing up, at Bethel College or both – in being one of their motivations for volunteering at Health Ministries Clinic.

“It’s part of the ethic of the Mennonite church,” says Randall, who grew up in Wichita. “We’re fortunate, and we need to give back.”

“The whole milieu at Bethel was one of service,” Tim adds. “I remember convocations being very influential. I also remember that for years there was a global map in the Fine Arts Center showing where Bethel alumni had served or were serving around the country and around the world.” Tim did a year of voluntary service in Hamilton, Ont., immediately after graduating from Bethel.

Valetta, whose home congregation is Eden Mennonite Church in rural Moundridge, remembers having mission workers coming through regularly to speak, and she later served as a church worker herself. After studying at Bethel and then getting her nursing degree at the University of Kansas (Bethel didn’t have a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree then), she spent two years in Nigeria with Mennonite Central Committee. Two years after returning home, she went back to school to become a nurse practitioner.

Milton Claassen ’54 began volunteering at Health Ministries Clinic eight years ago, after he retired from his orthopedic surgery practice. He knew about the clinic from hearing Tim give a presentation at the annual Mennonite Medical Association meeting and supported it financially before he began working there.

“The attitude at Bethel was one of service,” he says. “[My motivation comes from] a combination of the way Bethel taught us and the volunteer opportunities at medical school.” At Bethel, he participated in an organization called Student Volunteers.

J. Wendell Wiens ’55 (no relation to Tim) retired from his general surgery practice in 2000 and has been volunteering one half-day a week at Health Ministries Clinic since 2002. “Enough people asked me about it that my conscience got the better of me,” he says.

“[My wife Norma ’55] and I lived in India for eight years and I did everything [medical] there was,” he adds. “I go to Health Ministries because there are people there who need things I can provide.”