BY RITA McINERNEY

Special To The Bulletin

ATLANTA--It’s a heartwarming sight to see the large coaches of St. Joseph’s Mercy Mobile Health Care parked at clinic sites or wheeling around metropolitan Atlanta pursuing a Gospel-based mission to the poor.

In an era of insurance and HMO giants, the mobile clinics’ staff and volunteers dispense small-scale medical care and compassion in healing measure. And the usual doctor’s office reminder, “Payment due at time of treatment,” is nowhere to be seen within the clinic’s narrow confines.

Many of the men and women treated or referred have low-paying jobs but no health insurance. Others are homeless, living in shelters or on city streets.

Mercy Mobile Health Care began modestly in 1984 when

a group of St. Joseph’s Hospital doctors, nurses, Religious sisters and their friends reached out to feed the hungry at a downtown shelter. The group noticed the lack of health care for shelter guests and began attending to some of their ills, such as foot and skin sores, nutritional and respiratory ailments. They quickly saw the need for care on a broader scale.

With a small grant from the Sisters of Mercy and the backing of volunteers, the hospital purchased a van to bring health care to city streets.

Today, as a vital branch of St. Joseph’s Health System, there are two coaches, five vans and more than 30 service and clinic sites under the ever-widening umbrella of Mercy Care. The only mobile health care program in Atlanta, it supplies medical help and dignified care to anxious people at shelters, churches, missions, community centers and other facilities.

Pat Brown, service coordinator for the downtown area, has been with Mercy Care for almost eight years and was supervisor of AIDS education before being assigned to the mobile clinics. The clinics help “people who often wouldn’t get medical treatment if we didn’t come to them,” she said.

“They respect our clinic,” Brown added, saying that those served feel they are receiving good care. “We’re their primary providers... This makes me proud.” And people keep coming back, she said.

On Wednesdays the Mercy Care coach, staffed by a chaplain, two nurse practitioners and several volunteers, parks in the V-shaped lot outside the Atlanta Women’s Day Shelter at Marietta Street and Brady Avenue.

Funded by church and civic groups, the shelter is a daytime address for 80 to 120 women and children daily. Open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., the shelter serves breakfast and lunch and also has a security guard.

When the Mercy mobile clinic opens for “office hours,” the health advocate who drives the van assists the practitioner, taking temperatures and blood pressure readings and handling paperwork.

Advocate Michael Perritte views his work as an extension of his commitment at Bethesda Fellowship Church where he performs with the music ministry.

“We really emphasize the importance of people in our ministry and that’s what this is--caring for people who are unfortunate,” he said.

A triage approach is used with the patients, who usually number about 25 women and children, Brown said.

The triage worker routes patients to the area where they need to be seen, which may be by a practitioner, a social service or pastoral worker or for HIV information or testing. The triage worker also decides if a patient has an emergency condition and needs to be seen immediately.

Rod Stuldivant does the in-take at the Women’s Day Shelter. He is also a resource specialist in charge of housing men and women who seek short-term treatment for substance abuse.

Ruby Taylor, a family nurse practitioner on the coach since January 1995, says the mobile clinic is “filling a desperate need.”

“If you’re not careful you tend to get emotionally involved,” Taylor said. “The women need someone to talk to.” But the nurses “have a lot of backing” through the expertise of chaplain Sister Pat Thompson, RSM, and the social services staff.

Taylor, who works on the coach five days a week, tends to the medical needs of her patients and does referrals to support services as needed. Before joining Mercy Care, she worked for eight years in pediatrics and gynecology at Grady Hospital.

A volunteer registrar greets patients in a small area to the right of the entrance. Next to this is a six-foot by four-foot room housing a lab and pharmacy. Examining rooms fill the remaining space. From behind the curtains come whimpers and yells of sick children.

Some days registered nurses, student practical nurses and others volunteer on the coach.

Women are treated for conditions caused by aging, gastro-intestinal problems, high blood pressure and diabetes.

Patients being seen for the first time receive ID cards listing emergency numbers to call if they react to medication or require care on weekends.

While the medical needs are cared for in the mobile clinic, inside the shelter itself there are no empty seats in the main room where the social worker sees women referred to her.

Around her, day-sheltered women fill worn chairs and sofas, their faces reflecting weariness, despair, pain, defiance. Some chat with their neighbors; others talk to themselves. A few shuffle about aimlessly. Some just cry.

There is the occasional patient eager to talk about the “best treatment” she’s ever had.

Both her health and self-esteem are improved, Sophia Anita Joseph said, since she received her patient ID card last year. Her blood pressure is down and her anxiety about diabetes eased after tests for blood sugar were reassuring. She credits her new well being to the staff’s skilled attention and “praying with Sister Pat.”

“I’m grateful. It’s just beautiful how they work with you, explain what is the matter and what they continue to do. They let you feel you are somebody and that God is going to be good,” said Joseph, a native of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

At one end of the room Sister Thompson and a woman bow their heads in a shared prayer. A member of the Sisters of Mercy, the order which established Atlanta’s first hospital in 1880, Sister Thompson counsels and consoles women in the shelter day room or in the Mercy van parked outside next to the larger mobile clinic.

Depression is a lonely burden homeless mothers bear. For many, poverty translates into an unending search for scarce resources of housing, medical services, jobs and child care. Some manage to get it all together; others can’t.

Kathy Budde is often the ear that hears the fears of a mother frightened over a child’s sickness while trying to juggle job training, work interviews and day care.

Budde, a member of St. Jude Parish in Atlanta, is the volunteer registrar each Wednesday. She believes “more of Christ’s hands are needed to help the underserved. There just aren’t enough to go around.”

She is impressed by what she observes, “a big desire on the part of the staff to provide help and do it properly, not haphazardly.”

Money to keep Mercy Mobile in gear comes from a variety of sources. Contributions to the capital campaign of St. Joseph’s Mercy Care Foundation last year added $2.5 million to its endowment for Mercy Mobile. This included an anonymous gift of $500,000 and another $500,000 raised by WINGS (Workers Involved in New Growth for St. Joseph’s) and grants and gifts. Funds are also received from federal, state and city agencies.

Anyone interested in volunteering for Mercy Mobile may call (404) 249-8187. A variety of skills are needed in addition to those of volunteer doctors and nurses.