History of Children's Clinics

The organization now known as Children's Clinics for Rehabilitative Services opened its doors as Crippled Children's Clinic in 1947 in the backyard of Ted Walker, a Tucson businessman and member of the Blue Lodge Masonic Order. The clinic was created to treat children crippled by polio who were, at that time, being served in a hospital space that had to be vacated to make room for more inpatient beds. The crisis situation was remedied when four Masons came together to create a philanthropic non-profit corporation, Square and Compass, to fund care of these children.

In January of 1950, the 15,000 square foot building opened at 2916 East Broadway. It was funded entirely by donations to Square and Compass. The State of Arizona Children's Rehabilitative Services (CRS) program, within the Arizona Department of Health Services, managed the clinic, making it a state-administered agency.

By 1986 it became apparent that there were space and logistical limitations with the Broadway clinic. Square and Compass approached Tucson Medical Center (TMC) and University Medical Center (UMC) regarding a new building on the campus of one of the two medical centers. Ultimately, TMC was selected. The new clinic, of more that 50,000 square feet, was completed in the summer of 1991, again paid for entirely by donations to Square and Compass. Square and Compass leases the building to Children's Clinics for $1 per year.

Around the same time, the State of Arizona was reducing its role in directly providing medical services and opting towards contracting for these services. TMC and UMC put together a joint operating company that could assume responsibility for running the program in southern Arizona. In July of 1990, Children's Clinics was formed as a not-for-profit corporation. The Arizona Department of Health Services awarded Children's Clinics the contract to provide services under the CRS program throughout southern Arizona. Children's Clinics has held the contract ever since.

The evolution of Children's Clinics is unique in that it involved the cooperative efforts of many different organizations and constituencies - two hospitals, the medical school, community physicians, a philanthropic organization and the state health department. By joining together, these entities have developed a unified approach to the delivery of care to children with complex medical needs. This approach enables a multi-disciplinary, family-centered philosophy of care that has long been the cornerstone of Arizona's CRS program.

Children's Clinics contracts with various physician specialists in Tucson to provide care to a variety of children with complex medical conditions. This contracting arrangement is advantageous to clinicians because they are able to see and learn from complex medical cases involving children that they would not normally see in the course of their practice. It is advantageous to Children's Clinics in that it can get the very best clinicians available to provide services under one roof at a very fair cost. But most of all, the greatest advantage of the arrangement is to the patients, who are able to see multiple specialists during one trip to the clinic. This provides parents of the special healthcare needs children a convenient one-stop visit for healthcare; a medical home.