Steve

“As part of our cradle to grave care, we deliver babies and take care of them in the hospital. One of our traditions is to sing happy birthday and then pray over the baby right after he or she is born. We always ask the family if they feel comfortable having us pray, and almost every time they say yes. I remember early on, when I first joined Christ Community Health Services, I delivered a child for a family. She was this beautiful little baby girl, and we placed her in the warmer and sang happy birthday to her. I asked the father, ‘Would you like for us to pray?’ and he said, ‘I’m a Muslim, and I’d rather you didn’t.’ I said, ‘Then I won’t, but you have to.’ He looked at me in shock, and I said, ‘I’ve spent a lot of time in your part of the world, and I’m familiar with many of the traditions there. I know you’re required to issue the first call to prayer for that child. It's your job to present to your child the first call to honor and worship God. We want to encourage you to feel comfortable doing that.’ And so he went over to the warmer---here’s this guy who, up to that point, was so strong and stoic---and he just kind of melted. He didn’t cry, but he became visibly softer. He stood over his child and issued the call to prayer, and it was an incredibly beautiful, sacred moment. You just want to honor the fact that there’s a husband and a father present. Praise God! That’s just marvelous. Who are we to deny the right for that father to issue that expression of faith? The acknowledgement of thanksgiving, the acknowledgement of a deity, the acknowledgement that there is a God, is a message that that child first received from her father. I just think that’s so sublime. It’s beautiful really. 

"What I fashioned out of that story as guidance for the folks who work for me is that we are at all times to treat with dignity everyone who comes through our doors. If you have a wholehearted commitment to following God, then you should be wholeheartedly faithful in expressing love for your fellow human beings. It’s right there in the Bible: Love your neighbor as yourself. That’s not a suggestion. That’s a call. It’s a requirement. It’s exactly what Christ would want us to do.

“Christ Community Health Services was started by four medical students who literally took a blood oath that they would get back together after their separate residencies and serve in the most needy spot, they felt, in America.  They settled on Memphis, and one of the reasons they chose to come here is that in predominantly Caucasian areas of the city, doctors were competing with each other to get patients, while in predominantly African-American areas, patients were saying, ‘Where’s a doctor I can go to?’ They opened a clinic on Third Street twenty years ago, and that clinic is still operating. We have eight outpatient centers now: six are primary care centers (cradle to grave, very comprehensive), one is a women’s health center, and one is a mobile primary care center for the homeless. Our clinics are located right in the communities of greatest need. Part and parcel of our mission is that we’re trying to right the wrong of health injustice, the disparity of health care. Jesus was all about justice, and that’s what we’re trying to bring about. We take care of approximately 65,000 patients, with about 181,000 discrete clinic visits every single year, and we’re continuing to grow. We serve everybody who comes, just like Jesus served anybody who came to him. We don’t proselytize; I’m not trying to convert anybody to a religion. What we do is take an oath to live out Christ in the world. What a role model he is. What a benchmark he set on how to treat people. When you talk about being an evangelistic organization, it’s put-offish to some folks; it’s just an abrupt term that has negative connotations in people’s minds. But what we mean by evangelism is sharing Christ with the world in thought, word, and deed.

“We’re not a clinic where people come in and we say ‘Hey, you get what you get; be glad of it.’ That’s not right. Jesus wouldn’t want that kind of quality; he wouldn’t like that sort of ethos. As the Chief Medical Officer, my expectation is that we’ll not only live up to the criteria of quality management, but we’ll kick butt in that regard. We attract a very committed, intelligent, and talented pool of providers from various and sundry medical schools, physician assistant programs, and nurse practitioner programs. We are ethnically diverse: African-American, Caucasian, Asian, and Hispanic, and over half of our site leaders are women. We have medical clinics, pharmacies, dental services, behavioral health, and spiritual health services.

“A big part of our job is to educate. Preventive health care is what we try to get at, and it’s tough, challenging work. We ask ourselves: Is the entire population getting healthier? Are we changing habits? For some of our patients there have been decades of neglect before we see them for the first time. There are reasons for that: cultural barriers, transportation issues, some don’t know how to cook properly, some don’t know how to shop properly, and some don’t have the money to live in a way that’s good for their health. As a result, we deal constantly with the co-morbid conditions of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes that then cause coronary artery disease and other vascular diseases. We’re trying to break down the barriers that prevent someone from accessing a care clinic and establishing an ongoing relationship with a provider. Patients need a medical home (which is what we are), where they can have continuity of care. If we can make that happen for a woman, a mother, then we have a chance of getting the children. We might even get that austere beast that’s called the man to come in to a clinic so that we can take care of him.”

Col. Steve Sittnick, Army Ranger, with wife Cava and newborn son:

Read the March 24, 2013 Commercial Appeal article by clicking HERE or on the image below:

Dr. Steve Sittnick, D.O.
Chief Medical Officer for Operations
Family Medicine / Obstetrics 
Christ Community Health Services, 2595 Central Avenue
Ph. 901-260-8500

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