Photographer / Jessica Whitehead
After years of working as a midwife and earning her nurse practitioner’s license, Jana Schenkel, N.P., made many connections in the healthcare industry. One thing was clear.
“Several of us wanted to have a clinic that allowed those with no insurance or those who didn’t want to use their insurance an alternative or holistic healthcare practice, versus following their insurance plan,” Schenkel said.
Caring Hands Clinic opened in April 2024 and offers a variety of services in addition to primary care.
“In every way, we are a medical care office, but we also do massage, medical foot care, and we connect with other offices for alternative practices,” Schenkel said. “We do it all.”
Walk through the door and a number of services are at your fingertips — perhaps some that might come as a surprise.
“Our medical foot care is something some might not know we offer. You think pedicure, but this is more about getting the nails cut properly, working with ingrown nails, fungal issues and more,” Schenkel said. “We also do restorative medicine with infertility. We try to heal the body first and the pregnancy will follow.”
In addition, Caring Hands Clinic offers DOT physicals, youth athlete physicals, mental health services and obstetrics through Schenkel’s Happy Stork midwifery business.
It’s something more people are seeking: instead of treating one symptom, they want providers to look at the whole body and aim for long-term healing.
As a clinic not dictated by insurance companies, Schenkel said, the options are endless.
Too often, she added, people avoid the doctor for fear of being admonished for declining a specific vaccine or medication.
Perhaps the individual’s belief system supports alternative healthcare, or they’re simply uncomfortable with certain practices.
That doesn’t mean the clinic staff are opposed to conventional medicine — just that they don’t require everyone to follow the same regiment.
“Patients want to be responsible for their own autonomy. I think it’s a form of medical harassment to say if you don’t do A, B and C, we won’t take care of you. You have the right to make the choice,” Schenkel said. “My job is to provide the opportunities, and it’s your right to say what you want and don’t want without feeling like you’re getting in trouble. Some people are so used to it, they don’t want to go to the doctor anymore.”
Even more unique — the staff at Caring Hands Clinic will come to you.
“If someone doesn’t want to come to the office, or if you have six children and two are sick, we’ll come to your house. I think it brings things back to the way family medicine was done a long time ago,” Schenkel said. “For us, it’s a natural extension of what we do, but it surprises people that we’ll come to you for all of our services.”
The clinic continues to grow.
This summer, they’ll begin offering CT scans and MRIs in the office — at significantly lower costs than what’s typical with insurance.
“A lot of times, when a provider recommends an MRI, insurance requires you to first do an X-ray, then a CAT scan and then, maybe, we’ll do the MRI. There’s no reason to go through so many other services to get to the end result,” Schenkel said. “You might think an MRI costs several thousand dollars, but without insurance, we can offer it for a few hundred dollars. We don’t have the overhead, and it’s just the pure cost of the MRI itself. It provides faster and more efficient results.”
The clinic’s team of professionals, all with like-minded healthcare goals, bring their own specialties. One might concentrate on men’s health and emergency medicine, another on pediatrics and family practice, and yet another on elderly care or hard-to-find specialties.
It’s a dream come true for Schenkel.
“God truly put me in the position of doing this. It was not done out of my own ability. I don’t know how everything keeps coming together, but I know it is by God’s own will and grace, and it was through Him this has become a reality,” Schenkel said.
For more information, visit caringhandsclinicin.com.
