East Texas mobile health care clinic helps underserved patients

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KIRBYVILLE — When Shelly Huffman stepped onto a 40-foot bus on Monday afternoon, she wasn’t in search of public transportation. She wanted a checkup.

The 52-year-old had just lately been recognized with melancholy and hypertension, which runs in her household. Without health insurance coverage, Huffman might now not afford to see a health care provider to assist handle her hypertension.

This mobile medical unit, parked behind a neighborhood heart within the rural East Texas city of Kirbyville, had change into a lifesaver.

“I like the people here, and it’s affordable care,” Huffman stated. Her white T-shirt learn “I love pickup trucks and rock and roll.”

Inside the mobile bus — outfitted with medical provides corresponding to gloves, tourniquets and blood stress screens — a nurse practitioner named Anita Drake greeted Huffman. Between the usual questions on Huffman’s bodily and psychological health, Drake — or “Miss Anita” as her patients and coworkers fondly name her — and Huffman shared jokes and laughs.

Mobile health models like this one, operated by the TAN Healthcare clinic, have emerged as an efficient methodology to offer lifesaving care to hard-to-reach patients. With the very best uninsured charge within the nation — greater than double the nationwide common — Texas is residence to hundreds of underserved, economically deprived patients in want of medical care. And with an increasing number of rural hospitals closing down, entry to care is proscribed in Texas’ 172 rural counties.

As a federally certified health heart, TAN Healthcare receives federal funding and serves an underserved inhabitants. The clinic has brick-and-mortar websites in Beaumont and Orange and operates the mobile bus unit three days per week, offering preventive health care to outlying areas of East Texas, a lot of which haven’t any hospital of their very own.

At TAN, uninsured patients like Huffman pay for his or her health care based on a sliding scale primarily based on their household’s revenue degree and dimension. Huffman pays $25 for every go to, a nominal payment in comparison with the minimal of $80 she forked over at a close-by clinic. And she pays the identical quantity no matter what number of labs or exams are accomplished — or how lengthy her go to takes.

Whereas most docs’ places of work guide appointments each quarter-hour, TAN schedules patients each half-hour. Appointments with Drake routinely run longer.

The clinic generally loses cash on these longer appointments, stated Dena Hughes, CEO of TAN Healthcare. “But that’s why we’re a nonprofit,” she stated. “We’re not supposed to be making tons of money — we’re supposed to be putting money back into the system.”

Rural counties wrestle for health entry

Kirbyville occupies 2.4 sq. miles within the southern half of Jasper County, a closely forested area often called the Big Thicket. Originally a railroad terminus, the two,000-person city is now a standard stopping level for guests of one of many three close by lakes.

The city is one among a whole bunch in Texas the place entry to health care is proscribed. Over the previous twenty years, dozens of rural hospitals have shuttered, unable to maintain up with the rising prices of health care and dwindling rural populations.

Since 2005, 24 rural hospitals have closed in Texas, the very best quantity within the nation.

Kirbyville has no hospital of its personal, and whereas the close by Christus Southeast Texas Jasper Memorial Hospital stays, it did just lately close down its obstetrical unit and suspend orthopedic surgical procedures.

Now, 28% of counties in Texas haven’t any hospital, forcing residents to drive farther away to entry each preventive and emergency care at a time when fuel costs are surging. Statewide, there’s a big scarcity of major care physicians. Only four Texas counties — Fort Bend, Williamson, Rockwall, and Callahan — meet the federal benchmark of getting not less than one major care doctor for each 3,500 residents.

“You have [hospitals] that come and go and can’t sustain themselves,” Hughes stated. “We are building up this expectation and this energy around feeling better, and that’s a big deal.”

Texas is one among 12 states within the nation that has not expanded entry to Medicaid below the Affordable Care Act, which might enable Texas to supply government-funded health care to adults with incomes below 138% of the federal poverty line.

Instead, adults in Texas should have dependents or a incapacity to be eligible for Medicaid, no matter how low their incomes are. And the eligibility necessities are so stringent {that a} household of three with an annual family revenue of $4,000 pre-taxes would not qualify for Medicaid. As a end result, 1 in 5 Texas residents is uninsured. An estimated 1.7 million additional Texans would qualify for Medicaid if the state had been to increase eligibility.

This vast protection hole coupled with restricted entry to docs has created poor health outcomes in rural Texas. The ten Texas counties with the worst health outcomes, based on a study by the University of Wisconsin Health Institute, are all rural.

Much of the affected person inhabitants in rural communities has persistent diseases like diabetes or hypertension, they usually have delayed getting care or by no means had constant care.

“Some of our patients haven’t been seen in five to seven years,” stated Lyndon Hallmark, supervisor of TAN Healthcare’s mobile unit. “And they come in saying, ‘I’ve had a headache for three years,’ and their blood pressure is almost in the stroke zone.”

Providing compassionate care

After about 45 minutes along with her care group, Huffman left the mobile unit feeling happy. Her blood stress, as soon as elevated, was again inside a traditional vary. Several months of diligently taking her every day drugs had paid off.

“It was just perfect,” Huffman stated.

“I just love it at the clinic,” Huffman stated the day after her appointment. “The people are so nice and caring, and the nurse, she takes her time and listens and checks everything.”

TAN prides itself on offering compassionate care to a inhabitants that generally distrusts the medical neighborhood.

“We are more personal than a normal doctor’s office,” stated Y’londa Attaway, a registered nurse who works within the mobile clinic. “We don’t see as many patients, but we take the time to listen.”

Attaway stated some patients don’t like going to different docs on the town as a result of they really feel like they aren’t being heard.

Often, patients make appointments on the mobile clinic just because they need somebody to speak to, Hughes stated. Many wrestle with psychological health problems corresponding to anxiousness and melancholy. The nurses on the mobile unit stated they’re in some circumstances the one suppliers patients belief.

Hallmark and his group greet guests with hugs, not handshakes. Patients name suppliers by first identify and speak to them about their households. When a affected person calls the mobile unit, they don’t hear an automatic message. Instead, a health practitioner solutions the cellphone. And as soon as a affected person enters the bus, they’re by no means rushed out.

Between patients, Hallmark stepped exterior in the neighborhood heart’s car parking zone to smoke a cigarette. “This is how I keep going,” he joked.

Hallmark first got here to TAN as a affected person. He liked it a lot that he began working the entrance desk and extra just lately took over the mobile unit.

“We don’t have that white-lab-coat, starched-shirt, clinical environment mentality,” Hallmark stated. “Our staff here is approachable and down to earth.”

He’s unsure what is possible given the restricted monetary sources, however he has large desires for TAN. He needs to see the clinic add an imaging heart for patients who want X-rays or CT scans and hopes to see OBGYN additionally change into part of their common companies.