For more than two decades, Trinity Free Clinic has provided free health services to those living and/or working in Hamilton County who are uninsured, under-insured, and in low-income households.
“When we started in 2000, we were only open on Saturdays from nine to twelve,” said Cindy Love, one of the clinic’s co-founders and current Deputy Director. “Our initial goal was to ensure every child had vaccines to get into school.”
In those days, Trinity was just several temporary exam rooms created out of PVC pipe and curtains in the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic School library.
“We realized early on that there was a whole lot more need than just vaccines for kids,” Love said. “So, as a new medical need presented, we figured out how to address it.”
Today, Trinity Free Clinic operates out of a dedicated facility next door to Mount Carmel where they receive about 15,000 to 20,000 visits a year. In this location (now open six days a week) they offer a wide range of non-emergency medical, dental, and vision care.
Operating as a one-stop location for health and wellness, their model cuts down not only on cost for care and prescriptions, but also on multiple visits for families that share a single vehicle or have no car.
Since Trinity’s earliest years, many of the grants that make their services possible have come through the Hamilton County Community Foundation; from $10,000 of relocation expenses back in 2002 to this year’s $120,000 award of unrestricted, multi-year funding.
“HCCF has been a constant thread all the way through,” said Mel Wischmeyer, Executive Director of Trinity Free Clinic.
Lately, HCCF’s support has enabled Trinity to help fill the demand for new medical and dental assistants and medical interpreters.
“We were already providing a space for clinical rotations for university students in medical undergrad and graduate programs,” Wischmeyer said. “We thought to ourselves, ‘Could we be doing education and certifications for those entry-level medical positions?’”
Not only would it be a way to fill a workforce shortage, but by encouraging current Trinity patients to apply, the Trinity Allied Health Education Program has become an ingenious way to further benefit those whom Trinity serves.
That starts with offering a viable pathway to a major boost in pay.
“The average patient at Trinity comes from a family of four with an average household income of $25,500 a year earned at two or more part-time jobs in the service industry,” Love said.
Meanwhile, starting wages for medical and dental assistants range between $18 and $22/hour (between $37k and $46k a year). And just as importantly, these positions offer health insurance—rare for those working full-time hours at multiple part-time jobs in the service industry.
Thanks to a partnership with Vincennes University and WorkOne Indiana, students are paid during their months of training, allowing them to continue supporting families.
Furthermore, individuals exit the program with certifications and licensures that students of more traditional programs must find and complete on their own. That means Trinity’s students are often hired on at the upper end of wages when they accept a position.
“Even hospitals don’t expect new hires to come in with the clinical experience our students have had,” Love said.
The education continues beyond the medical subject matter, however.
“Soft skills have been important for this population,” said Love. That includes everything from efficient and economical meal planning to smart study habits.
It has paid off.
Last year, when it came time to unveil the pilot cohort’s CCMA test results (Certified Clinical Medical Assistant), students braced themselves. Many had failed the practice test. In fact, in 2023, nearly a quarter of all CCMA test-takers failed their first round.
“One hundred percent of our group passed,” Wischmeyer said. “So, they’re crying, we’re crying… and the next thing you know, some of them are talking about going to nursing school.”
Other educational opportunities HCCF has supported at Trinity include Bridging the Gap, a training program for medical interpreters. Bilingual clients of Trinity are trained as licensed medical interpreters, which allows health providers to fulfill national requirements of informed medical consent. This is a growing need in Hamilton County; for instance, nearly 90% of behavioral health providers lacked bilingual therapists in the county as of 2021.
“These programs are transformative as a way to lift yourself out of poverty,” Wischmeyer said. “Multi-lingual services are needed everywhere you go in medicine.”
Trinity credits HCCF not only with decades of transformative funding, but also opening doorways to other partnerships and funding sources. For instance, early in 2022, Trinity began HCCF’s 6-month Social Innovation Incubator program.
“After we completed that, Hamilton County Commissioners stepped in with a $50,000 grant that allowed us to start the Trinity Allied Health Education Program,” Wischmeyer said. “That was followed by a major contribution from United Way where, again, the introduction was made through HCCF.”
More recently, the clinic is utilizing funds from the HCCF multi-year funding grant to explore the feasibility of opening a Medicaid-only clinic. Nearly 50,000 Hamilton County residents are currently enrolled in Medicaid, but most cannot find a local provider who will accept their insurance.
That speaks to a larger misperception that Love and Wischmeyer hope to dispel. While many Hoosiers recognize Hamilton County as the state’s wealthiest county, that condition certainly doesn’t apply across the board. And many of those who are employed in Hamilton County communities are increasingly unable to live here.
“People are surprised to learn that the patients we treat are the people you’re in line with at the store, sitting next to in church, or that your kids sit next to in school,” Wischmeyer said. “There are so many people in our county who are just one or two paychecks from disaster.”
Thanks to the efforts of Trinity Free Clinic over the last quarter century, more of Hamilton County can access the care they need while also tapping into the professional opportunities that can change their lives.
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