MercyMed clinic to serve those who need low-cost or free medical services

Grant Scarborough didn’t want to be a doctor. He wanted to be in ministry full time -- perhaps as a missionary. After majoring in pre-vet, then biology, at the University of Georgia, he couldn’t see how his interest in science and love for people could be combined.

After working for several years in Atlanta for the Christian organization Young Life, as well as in a church, a close friend advised him to go to medical school.

Then another wrote him out of the blue to say the same.

He was disappointed the day he got accepted. In 1999, after his first day at Mercer University Medical School in Macon, he still felt confused. Lord, what am I doing here?

Fast forward 11 years. Scarborough is about to open a clinic called MercyMed in the former CB&T branch on Second Avenue. It will mainly serve the poor in that community -- those with or without insurance. For now, he’s the only doctor, board-certified both in pediatrics and internal medicine. He plans to open around the first of January.

“Jesus heals people sometimes physically before he heals people spiritually, and sometimes he heals them spiritually before he heals them physically,” he said in a recent interview. “He cares for the whole person.”

The location is key. The clinic is near several social services agencies including Open Door Community House, Valley Rescue Mission and the Homeless Resource Network. With a referral from such places, a homeless person who doesn’t have insurance can get free medical care; but those with some money -- even those with health insurance -- can also be seen.

Payment from patients will be on a sliding scale, based on income and national poverty rates. For instance, a truck driver with no kids making $45,000 would likely pay $45 per visit. Others who have much less might pay $25. Someone married to a neurosurgeon, he said, “will pay the full amount.

“We like the idea of people putting a little skin in the game, like sweat equity in Habitat for Humanity. Ninety-nine percent of people have no problem (with paying).”

Scarborough, a Columbus native, knows about this type of mission well.

After graduating from his residency in Memphis in 2007, he and his wife, Anne Morecraft Scarborough, moved to Augusta, Ga., where he and another doctor planned to open a clinic similar to this model. Scarborough and Robert Campbell, who met in Memphis, had little more than a vision when Scarborough moved to Augusta. Campbell had already been practicing there.

What resulted eventually was Christ Community Health Services. Today it has upwards of 10,000 “patient encounters” annually. For instance, someone who comes in once a year counts as one encounter, and someone who comes in five times counts as five encounters.

“Really the first year could be defined as ‘God was faithful.’ We had nothing,” he said. “We moved ourselves and had friends who came from Memphis to help us move. I thought, ‘This is crazy. I barely have a job but I have a theory of a job and no money.’”

The two men located a home downtown that back in the 1800s was the site of the first city hospital, and later a home for Confederate war widows. The owner of the building wanted $400,000. The young doctors didn’t have it.

“We had about $20,” Scarborough recalled with a laugh. “Anne and I were moving to Augusta, and Robert got an e-mail from that guy who said, ‘Aww, hell, I’ll just give you the building.’”

Before the place could be renovated, the clinic set up in a temporary location.

To garner income for him and his family, Scarborough first worked at University Hospital. Then later, he and Campbell worked in Thomson, Ga., about 30 minutes west of town. The first year, they didn’t draw a salary from the clinic, a 501(c)(3) non-profit.

“We were the signing bonus,” he quipped.

Then both approached University Hospital leaders and boldly asked for $2 million. After laughing, then saying no, the hospital officials offered them $180,000 for first-year operations.

“They saw it as an investment in the future,” Scarborough said.

After all, as MercyMed will do in Columbus, Christ Community Health Services relieved University Hospital, and others, of many unnecessary ER visits. (University Hospital has continued its contribution to the Augusta clinic. The hospital estimates it saves $1.3 million annually, minus donations, because of Christ Community.)

Campbell remains a physician there. He’s one of five providers; a sixth works part-time. The registered nurse who started out with both men, Karen Hobbs, followed Scarborough to Columbus. With her children now grown, she told Scarborough she sees this as her “last big adventure” for God.

The move toward Columbus for Grant and Anne and their four girls began more than two years ago. That’s when Grant received a call from the Rev. Hal Brady, who was then the pastor of St. Luke United Methodist Church. He and a physician in his church, Champ Baker, were interested in starting such a clinic here, and they visited Augusta. Scarborough gave them a presentation on how to set up such a clinic, based on his experiences in Augusta and in Memphis.

Though in 2007 the Scarboroughs relished the idea of living in Augusta long-term, “we never felt settled,” Grant said. “I think the Lord knew if I was completely settled I would never leave. It was of the Lord’s kindness to say, ‘I don’t want you to get too comfortable here. I brought you here to do this once, learn how to do it and get the skills you need to go somewhere else.’ ”

He just didn’t know where that would be.

Even when Brady called a few weeks later to say he wanted Scarborough himself to come run such a clinic in Columbus, the doctor said no. At least three times. Finally he said he’d come here to talk.

“I was pretty specific. I told him, ‘I don’t want a St. Luke clinic; I want a clinic for the poor in this community that everybody will come to and that’s open to every church; and if you will help me get that going, that’s what I want to do.’ But hopefully I wasn’t that blunt.”

Brady agreed. Though he now lives in Atlanta after retiring from St. Luke in June, the pastor leads the board of MercyMed. The others are: Charles Clark of Charles Clark & Associates; A.J. Morris of Merrill Lynch; Rich Stephens, M.D., an OB/Gyn physician; Skip Perkins of Synovus; and Paula Jeffries, a member of Highland Community Church in close proximity to MercyMed.

Brady got hooked when he visited Augusta.

“He got me when he said, ‘We are missionaries for Jesus Christ and medicine is our vehicle,’” Brady said via phone this week. “That really touched me, when I saw what they were doing. I thought Columbus and Muscogee County needed something like that.”

Like in Augusta, local hospitals have promised to lend support, according to Scarborough. St. Francis will process its lab work; and Columbus Regional will make patients’ electronic records available. For now, Scarborough is working part-time at St. Francis as a hospitalist.

Various local foundations and churches, in addition to St. Luke, have committed to help in a number of ways.

This new addition to the city is not alone in its medical outreach to the underserved. The non-profit Valley Healthcare Inc. does so on Delauney Avenue, and the Columbus Baptist Association operates a medical clinic on the corner of Buena Vista and Steam Mill roads, staffed by part-time, volunteer doctors. Scarborough said as he looks for a full-time physician to join him in his practice, he’s also on the lookout for one for the CBA.

In medical literature, Columbus is considered a Medically Underserved Area (MUA), a place with a high number of people who lack consistent medical care.

Much of that is financial. Many with a full-time job -- for instance, a hairdresser or a waiter -- don’t have access to insurance through their employers.

“It’s not always the person sitting on the porch drinking (beer),” Scarborough said of the poor. “Many of them have jobs.”

Yet, insurance on the private market can run $10,000 annually and up. So, many opt out. Statistics show that 58 percent of people who file for bankruptcy do so because of stacked-up medical bills.

New federal legislation will help ease some of the burden, but the nation’s healthcare system will remain “complicated,” and people will still have financial needs related to medical care, he said.

He believes in another way.

Scarborough doesn’t particularly like the word “holistic,” but he does know he enjoys treating the whole person: body, mind and spirit. He loves the story of the Good Samaritan in the New Testament, in which a man is beaten and robbed and left on the side of the road. The Good Samaritan is the one who comes along to help. Jesus uses the parable to say one’s neighbor includes such a person in desperate need.

“The guy was physically hurt, broken emotionally and spiritually. He probably had some PTSD. Jesus said, ‘Go love that guy.’ ... It’s hard. A lot of folks aren’t grateful. A lot of folks don’t say thank you. A lot of folks like to con you but then again, all of us aren’t that grateful to the Lord or always thankful either.”

He told vignettes of people he encountered as patients in Augusta: the woman who as a child was kept by her mother in an incestuous relationship; the man who thought he was a woman and prostituted himself; the man who woke up several times a night because of a hole in his air mattress. And a couple he described as “the loneliest couple in Augusta” – he with cerebral palsy and she in a wheelchair, who had been robbed by family and lived in a trailer with their dog.

He spoke fondly of each one, grateful for the encounters and ways to serve them beyond the exam room.

“The bottom line is, until you realize you’re as broken as the guy on the street, or if you think you can just fix people,” he said, “you won’t be able to help them. The only one who can fix them is Jesus.”

Allison Kennedy is an independent correspondent.

This story was originally published November 26, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "MercyMed clinic to serve those who need low-cost or free medical services."