Indiana's specialty clinics.

• Author: Hughes, Ann
• Position: Health care industry - Industry Overview

Time was when most specialty clinics were freestanding units. That's changing.

It used to be that most specialty clinics were freestanding units. That's changing. To keep up with the competition, Indiana hospitals are getting into the act. "There is a general tendency toward outpatient services as alternative sources of revenue," explains David B. Dann, president and CEO of Methodist Occupational Health Centers, which is affiliated with Indianapolis-based Methodist Hospitals of Indiana.

Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie, for example, operates three specialty clinics that are staffed by residents in the hospital's teaching program and by private physicians with privileges to practice at Ball. A player in the specialty game since 1969, Ball maintains clinics that serve the areas of family practice, internal medicine and obstetrics and gynecology, with treatment on an outpatient basis.

An unusual clinic in Fort Wayne is the Clinic for Children with Special Health Care Needs at the Lutheran Hospital of Indiana. Physicians on the clinic's staff include pediatricians, dentists, cardiologists, orthopedists, neurologists and plastic surgeons. Lutheran also maintains its renowned heart-transplant clinic as well as a multidisciplinary muscular-dystrophy clinic that it operates in conjunction with the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Mulberry Center at Evansville's Welborn Baptist Hospital, a comprehensive hospital-based mental health facility, offers the only chemical-dependency program in the tri-state area solely for adolescents. The only short-term mental health facility for children in the three-state region is represented by the Pediatric Mental Health Services at Mulberry Center.

Why does an acute-care hospital branch out into the realm of mental health? "People are realizing that physical problems have psychological repercussions," explains Suzanne R. Haug, Welborn's director of community and media relations. Mulberry Center has been providing mental health services to children, adolescents and adults since 1970. Its emphasis is on treatment of eating and codependency disorders as well as chemical dependency and sexual abuse. Referrals to its codependency and sexual-abuse treatment programs have come from as far away as California and South Carolina.

People who must learn to live with chronic pain can get counseling and treatment at the Pain Management Center at Saint Margaret Hospital and Health Care Centers in Hammond. According to figures...