While feeling Keshauna Butler's hot forehead, Nurse Practitioner Cathy Kay (right) talks with Rickey Graham II about his stepdaughter's sore throat last week in a MediCorp mobile health clinic. Butler later was diagnosed with strep throat. rez

Family Nurse Practitioner Cathy Kay (right) talks with Lili Ramirez, who tells of a pain in her left elbow. Speaking Spanish with Ramirez, who did not speak English, Kay found the problem in a few minutes. rez

Mobile units deliver medical care to those who can't afford to see a doctor in the Fredericksburg area.

By JIM HALL
The Free Lance-Star

Date published: 11/13/2002

Rolling clinics taking health care to remote areas

Sherrie Swift is unemployed and uninsured. Asked where she would go for medical care if the Mobile Health Clinic had not stopped recently in Colonial Beach, Swift replied, "I wouldn't."

Swift and her neighbor, Michelle Boyer, were among the patients who visited the mobile unit when it made one of its regular visits to Westmoreland County.

The two women are typical of the type of patient that the program is now trying to reach: uninsured, unemployed and unable to get basic medical care.

"I can't afford to see a regular doctor," Boyer said.

The specially outfitted RVs have been a part of the Fredericksburg medical community since 1995. But MediCorp Health System, the owner of the units, suspended the service earlier this year and then relaunched it in September to serve the needs of the working poor.

In effect, the two 34-foot Gulf Stream coaches have become rolling free clinics and an alternative for some patients to the emergency room.

"We wanted to make the program fit the need," said Pamela Thorpe, manager of the service.

The staff now provides primary-care treatment and follow-up care for children and adults. In the past, it did only episodic care, referring patients to their doctors for continuing treatment.

The problem, Thorpe said, was that most patients didn't have a doctor or couldn't afford to see one. Now, they can return to the van on its next stop in their community. For example, one of the units will make a scheduled visit to Bowling Green Primary in Caroline County tomorrow.

Patients pay for the service on a sliding-scale based on their income.

"The majority of our patients are going away with no bill at all," Thorpe said.

Michelle Boyer, 35, recently met the van outside Colonial Beach Elementary School. She and her husband, David, an electrician, and their three children moved to the town last year from Florida.

Boyer said she learned about the van when her children brought home a flier from school.

"I'm very impressed with it," she said.

She was treated for chest pain, and paid nothing for the care.

Without the van, "I'd end up going to the emergency room if it got really bad," she said.

Date published: 11/13/2002