PHOTO: BRENT G. MATHIS
BizHEALTH
Jared Perkins
CEO Children’s Clinics
Gemma Thomas
Chief Administrative Officer Children’s Clinics
Children’s Clinics Marks 30 Years
Coordinated Care Model Adeptly Serves Southern Arizona Youth Children with complex medical needs and their families have found respite in Children’s Clinics for the past 30 years. This special Southern Arizona medical facility provides family-centered comprehensive medical, rehabilitative and social care for more than 5,500 children challenged with severe illnesses, chronic diseases or conditions with functional impairment. A welcoming, coordinated point of healthcare access for these special kids is the goal, said Jared Perkins, CEO of Children’s Clinics. “It’s often difficult to navigate care because treatment is so complex,” he explained. “There are critical gaps beyond emotional and financial, and our kids need intensive support. They need coordination through one medical home, and we provide it for them.” 26 BizTucson
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Fall 2020
Square & Compass Origins
Children’s Clinics is housed in a 50,000-square-foot facility on the campus of TMC Healthcare, built in 1991 by philanthropic partner Square & Compass, a nonprofit with a legacy of caring for medically challenged children of Southern Arizona and northern Mexico for more than 75 years. The partnership began in post-war Tucson in the late 1940s, when the polio epidemic was at its peak. With no rehabilitation center available for vulnerable children, a group of Freemasons, led by Tucson businessman Ted Walker, converted a backyard, 500-square-foot playhouse near Fort Lowell and Country Club roads into a therapy center. When hundreds of children began overwhelming the small playhouse each week for therapies, a plan for a permanent facility was put in place. With
help from local carpenters, brick layers and Sundt Construction, a new facility opened on Broadway in 1950 under the name, Square & Compass Crippled Children’s Clinic. Its name honored the two architectural tools that best represent the masons’ craft. “Children are always at the core of our service,” said Square & Compass Executive Director Amy Burke. Decades after the Broadway clinic opening, continued expansion of services included orthopedics, cardiology, audiology and orthodontics. When the healthcare system began a dramatic overhaul in the 1980s, Walker saw that the system required a new approach, Burke recalled. Children’s Clinics opened on the TMC campus with a uniquely coordinated model.
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PHOTOS: COURTESY CHINDREN’S CLINIC
By Monica Surfaro Spigelman