Member Spotlight: Dr. Joseph and Sarah Flint, Delavan Pediatrics

Dr. Joe Flint has a top priority: his patients.

You don’t have health insurance? The Delavan, Illinois, pediatrician offers a cash discount for self-pay patients.

You don’t want your children to be given unnecessary medications? He’ll suggest natural treatments and diets as an alternative, when they can be effective.

You don’t trust vaccines? He will work with you to give the care you believe is best for your children.

His goal through his new practice is to minister to families, not get rich off them. He became even more convinced of this priority when the Lord “just allowed everything to fall into place for this practice.”

Things have usually worked out that way for Joe, thanks to God.

For instance, the Toledo, Ohio, native ended up doing his residency at Children’s Hospital of Illinois in Peoria. During that time, he attended Bethany Baptist Church, where he joined the college singles group. He met a lady named Sarah there, and a year later, in 2003, they were married.

In 2004, after he completed his residency, Joe and Sarah moved to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Joe had attended medical school on an Army scholarship that required four years of service after graduation. He knew he would likely be deployed to Iraq for a year, but that was delayed long enough that he and Sarah were able to celebrate their first anniversary together. Then, after serving a year as a pediatrician on the base, he was sent to Iraq—one week after their second anniversary in 2005. Nearly a year later, he arrived home … two days before their third anniversary.

“There are just so many ways that the Lord provided for the timing of things, and the way He protected me while I was in Iraq,” Joe says.

While stationed at a base near the Baghdad airport, Captain Joe Flint was battalion surgeon. As a general practitioner for base personnel, he directed a troop medical clinic. He and a few other physicians serving with him were responsible for the health care of a few hundred troops. Joe received a Bronze Star, given to personnel for meritorious service in a combat zone.

His time there was generally uneventful, he says, with mortars hitting their base only a couple times. But the 24/7 aspect of being in a war zone and never leaving the base was a different way of living for him.

“You’re on constant alert, aware of what’s going on, that things could happen,” he says. “Thankfully, nothing significant happened during my time there.”

He was blessed, though, by having a “good number of fellow believers” in the medical company he was assigned to. The company commander was a Christian, he says, as were several doctors and physician’s assistants.

“So we banded together,” he says. “We got close throughout that year. We had Bible studies, as well as church services every Sunday, in the chapel that was on base. We all just kind of stayed close and involved, and that kept us grounded during that time.”

After returning to Fort Campbell and serving two more years at the base, Joe and Sarah decided to move to Delavan, a town of 1,800, where Sarah has family. He got a job as a pediatrician with a hospital’s medical group in nearby Morton.

“We just love the small-town atmosphere,” Joe says, speaking for his wife and their two boys, Josiah, 5, and Caleb, 2.

During his first two years in Morton, he was the only full-time pediatrician at the facility, feeling “more or less like a solo practitioner” in some ways. He grew to like that and knew that someday he would want to have his own practice closer to home. He was also growing tired of the daily half-hour commute. Then, conversations “here and there” and various circumstances led to the opportunity to start his own practice right there in Delavan.

“My wife and I prayed about it,” he says. “We felt the leading that it was what the Lord wanted us to do.”

The idea of running his own practice suits his personality well, Joe says.

“You get to create more relationships,” he says. “It just seems to be a little slower pace. I generally have more time. By nature, I’m a quiet, reserved sort, and I really enjoy that. For me to come down here wasn’t really much of a change, because it is more of whom I am.”

He’s getting settled into his new facility that was a doctor’s office when it was originally built more than 50 years ago, but was a retail store between physicians. The building has been restored to reflect this history and the time period in which it was built. The room that was once used to take X-rays still has some safety features in place, but now his nurse uses it to take the measurements and weights of Joe’s young patients. Framed on the walls in the waiting rooms and exam rooms are some retro health posters from the early and mid-20th century that Sarah found online.

He knew from practicing in Morton that some of his patients would be self-pay, either because they couldn’t afford health insurance or had chosen to join a health care sharing ministry.

“I said, ‘OK, what can I do to make care affordable and accessible?’” Joe says.

He was concerned that many people without a way to pay high health care expenses would skip wellness visits, especially well-baby visits.

“It’s important to not have that financial barrier,” he says, “so I looked at how I could use this practice as a ministry for those who don’t have insurance or who don’t want to carry insurance. I settled on rates that were affordable.”

He did that by looking at standard rates charged by inexpensive urgent care facilities, and adopting similar fees for basic services.

For an illness visit for a cash-paying family, for example, he charges less than 50 percent of what he bills insurance, which always pays him a reduced rate anyway.

Another way he saves his patient families money is by suggesting natural treatments when appropriate, although he uses traditional medical treatments and medications in the majority of his practice.

“There’s a lot of dependence on prescription medications, and many times, the side effects are undesirable,” he says. “The costs can also be a factor. But many times I look at things like diet, trying to shift family’s diets toward more natural, whole foods that are organic or minimally processed.”

His approach has developed into “what can we do naturally to help our bodies heal and stay healthy without having to be dependent upon these synthetic drugs?”

“Natural treatment options, if available, may offer the same benefits with less cost and risk than commonly used treatments,” he says. “This is the essence of integrative medicine—taking the best of traditional, and natural or homeopathic treatments, with the focus on treating the patient and not just the disease.”

Joe says that he plans to work for certification as an integrative medicine physician in 2013.

“But even if I don’t do that, I’ll still have the knowledge base that I can incorporate into the practice as I have been,” he says.

For instance, he has offered many recommendations for natural and homeopathic treatments in the area of attention deficit hyperactive disorder among children.

“There’s a lot of apprehension about the stimulants that are prescribed,” he says.

Instead, he looks for natural options, “things that could be used to help the symptoms without the side effects of the stimulants or the dependency that could develop from the stimulants.” For instance, ADHD children may be helped with various natural supplements, he says.

“A lot of it is centered on the child and focusing on his health and well-being, and not focusing on the problem,” Joe says. “It’s an easy thing to throw a prescription at it, but I like the option of changing diets or trying something natural.”

He also is open and respectful of parental opinions regarding vaccines, including if, when, and how they are given.

“I have many families in my practice that have questions or concerns regarding vaccines, and I do not apply pressure to them to cause them to do something with which they are uncomfortable,” he says. “If a family chooses not to vaccinate, that is not a problem. If a family chooses to follow an alternative schedule, I will work with the family to find the schedule that will work best for them.

“They will find that I am sympathetic to their concerns and will listen to them. Parents are free to ask questions and voice their concerns,” he says.

They are, after all, his top priority.