Visit to the Nashville Mobile Market at Napier

Inside the Market at Napier

We had the privilege today to visit the Nashville Mobile Market sponsored by Vanderbilt University. It was an great time!  The Mobile Market is, as it states, a small grocery store on wheels.  They had all kinds of healthy foods to choose from like bananas, apples, pears, spinach, sweet potatoes, and whole grains.  The purpose and mission of the mobile market is to provide access to wholesome foods in areas that do not have other affordable grocery stores.  They have multiple stops throughout the week and or favorite is the new one because it is only about mile from our front door of the clinic.

The Best Kids in Nashville!!!

The Market has started a very creative way to get kids to eat healthy and keep their grades up too.  For every A a child receives on his/her report card, they get a piece of fruit.  If I know the kids at Napier, the Mobile Market better buy some more fruit!

The Clinic at Mercury Courts will also be coming to the Market on Wednesdays from 2:30-4:30pm to provide blood pressure screenings and help answer any nutritional questions any of our friends in the community might have (particularly when the weather starts getting warm). So, bring a sack for all of your good food, a pen a pencil to take notes, and a your appetite for nutritious food, but most importantly, be ready for a great time!

One last announcement, The Clinic at Mercury Courts is now "on-line" Come and take a peek at our Facebook page at Our Facebook Page (<--Click Here) We will be using this site to communicate clinic news and updates as well as health news throughout the day.  Don't forget to "Like".  You can also follow us on twitter at  Follow @MercuryClinic.

Until next time....Be Healthy Nashville!

Spring is Here

Spring is finally here in Nashville! The Clinic at Mercury Courts celebrated by having our first Health Extravaganza for 2013. It was an amazing time. We invited everyone from the area and had a great time.  It was all put together by Brittany Jewett, the newest member of our team and an awesome addition to Urban Housing Solutions.  The Napier Elementary Community Center, The Mobile Market, and Franklin Road Women's Health Center were only a few of our guests and sponsors. Our partner was the wonderful Trevecca Physicians Assistant Program.  They were incredible!  Vanderbilt represented with a crew from the Vanderbilt Program for Interdisciplinary Learning.  The numbers are not in yet but it looks like we had well over 100 people. We are so happy to becoming an active part of the community.  Great Pic below!!

We have quite a few spring and summer events lined up like partnering with the new Mobile Market location at Napier Elementary School on Wednesday from 2-4pm to provide health screenings like blood pressures and blood sugar testing.

We also just recently got on Facebook. Please visit our site at The Clinic at Mercury Courts Facebook We are excited to have another way to connect with our community. Like and get updates for all the events we will be having this Spring.

I also wanted to give a special thanks the Mercury Courts community for allowing us to come in become a part of your community. We are very grateful to you and you are all wonderful neighbors!!! Thank you for all of your support!

Special Guest

News from The Clinic at Mercury Courts!! We had a very special guest visit the clinic this past week.  We were proud to host the Tennessee House of Representative Speaker of the House Beth Harwell (@speakerharwell). It was very exciting. It was a brief visit, but it was one that we will not forget.  We have Chad Gentry PharmD to thank for inviting the Speaker.  She came to see how we are using the disciplines of Advanced Nursing, Pharmacy, Patient Advocacy, and Medicine to provide holistic care to our patients. Who are GREAT. They are why we are here.

We have quite a few things in the ext few weeks as well. Starting with our participation in the Project Homeless Connect 2013 at the Tennessee Fair Grounds. Here is a link. We are very excited about serving the homeless of Nashville find permanent housing through our partners and get hooked in with medical care through our clinic. Win-Win. We have had over 200 fu vaccines donated to us from The Shade Tree Clinic and over 900!!! glucose testing strips to do blood glucose testing. These were donated by vendor donations arrange by generous donor.  We are humbled and grateful to both of these partners as well as the 16-20 volunteers who will help us provide services.
are also pleased to announce that we are in the planning stages of creating our Mercury Courts Diabetes Program. Of course it will include our interdisciplinary team, but we are also hoping to partner with an innovative Patient Engagement Software Company to trial a new way to engage and coach or patients with diabetes.

Speaker Harwell being greeted by
Aaron Scott FNP and Dr Bonnie Pilon with the Vanderbilt School of Nursing

If you have time and you are in Nashville come visit us at
411 Murfreesboro Pike
Nashville, Tn 37210

Our phone number is (615) 259-5124
Information

Visit our Facebook Page for Clinic News and Events
The Clinic at Mercury Courts

Follow @MercuryClinic

Happy Holidays

We are coming into the holiday season strong. We have more than doubled patients seen per month since August.  To say thank you to the residents of Mercury Courts and our patients for being so welcoming to us, we are giving everyone a special holiday gift bag. Thank you to the Vanderbilt School of Nursing for donating over 200 gift bags full of great stuff!! We are so happy to be an active member in the community.

The Vanderbilt Nurse Magazine wrote a great story about the clinic  in it's latest installment. Click Here to view read it.  We aren't running any special programs for the month but we are happy to reach out to Nashville's homeless folks. We are continuing offering free visits to anyone homeless who needs the care.  I would also like to thank the organizers of Nashville's Boulevard Bolt and everyone who participated on Thanksgiving Day.  The money we are receiving is going directly to the care of homeless people that are coming into the clinic. Thank you, Thank you, and Thank you, again.

Hope everyone has a Happy Holiday Season!

Dispensary of Hope and other things.

We are very excited to get or Dispensary of Hope up and running.  What a blessing to our patients.  We are able to provide many chronic care medications directly to our patients and not have to worry if they will be unable to pay for or pick up their meds.  It is a relief to them and us both.

We are also wrapping up our first Bi-Annual Women's Health Week this week.  It has been fairly successful. We always want to help more people. We still have tomorrow and Saturday Morning to go, so....all you women out there come on in!!

Another upcoming event we are very happy to participate in is the Project Homeless Connect 2013. We have never been a part of it but are planning to offer all kinds of stuff. Health Screenings and counseling. We are again collaborating with our friends at Urban Housing Solutions here in Nashville. They will be educating and answering questions about public housing and talking applications!!

Thanks to everyone who has helped and volunteered for theWomen's Event  and can't wait till spring for the next one.

Growing!

Growing everyday. Things are still slower than we would like, but people are coming!!!! We are so excited.  We have been giving out flu shots for the last week and a half and that has brought some wonderful folks into the clinic.

A few things going on this week....

We are also planning on having a Women's Health Event next month. The tentative dates are Nov 16-17th. It is short notice, but anything we can do to get more awareness for the clinic and people in the doors is a good thing.  We have a few provider volunteers for the event but could use more.  We will be    doing a complete physical and counseling including Pap for $25 (cost of the lab only).

The Contributor, a wonderful local Nashville paper that specifically address local issues effecting our homeless community, is doing a story on our clinic.  What an honor. It is also nice to have one more friend in Nashville. More Info on The Contributor

Our interdisciplinary learning students have really stepped up this past week as well. They have been canvassing the neighborhood encouraging patients to come in the clinic...hey we are not proud...they are very enthusiastic and free!! Love our students.

For anyone into medical tech stuff, our Interface with our lab vendor, LabCorp will be up and running by the end of the week I hope. I also plan on doing a survey at some point soon to see if a patient portal would be well received or not. Then see if we can get it paid for of course.

The Clinic at Mercury Courts

The Clinic at Mercury Courts is a Nurse Managed Health Center established by Vanderbilt University School of Nursing in collaboration with Urban Housing Solution, a not for profit housing organizations providing affordable, permanent housing for low income and recently homeless individuals and families. Our ongoing goal is to provide a stabilizing influence for this often neglected and overlooked part of the Nashville community while also educating our next generation of healthcare providers. We are accomplishing this by utilizing a holistic and collaborative healthcare model incorporating the disciplines of nursing, medicine, pharmacy, social service and the individual as equal partners on the healthcare team.

We have had our doors open for only 3 months but already, we can tell this is going to be a great experience. Everybody has been great are almost having to turn away volunteers and supported...Almost.  It has been very encouraging all the support we have gotten. In fact, just last week our clinic was able to collaborate with the Vanderbilt Center for Integrative Heath, Shade Tree Clinic, and Mission Point to co-sponsor the Nashville Premier of Escape Fire:The Fight to Rescue American Health Care.  It was a wild success!!! The film was excellent (I saw it twice already) and the post discussion was very enlightening.  I particularly enjoyed seeing the interactions between the different health disciplines. It gave me quite a bit of needed hope for health cares future. 

In fact, it reminded me of what we are doing at the Clinic at Mercury Courts.  This Clinic is starting from a base of interdisciplinary practice like I have rarely seen in 15 years of clinical practice. My continued hope is that we will be one of many catalysts that spark new life into the American healthcare system.