The City of Franklin and Southampton County have partnered with Old Dominion University to launch a mobile health care clinic that will serve people who would otherwise have to travel long distances to see a doctor. The clinic officially opened Wednesday at SP Morton Elementary School in Franklin, providing free health care to children.
“Some people can’t drive and get to where they need to go, out of town, 45 minutes to an hour away,” Franklin Mayor Bobby Cutchins said. “So we’re really excited to partner with Old Dominion University on this.”
The clinic’s goal is to meet residents where they are and address rural health disparities by breaking down the boundaries of quality health care.
For the next four years, the clinic plans to provide free health care at least three days a week. It will be comprised of a family nurse practitioner, a pediatric nurse practitioner, mental health and psychiatric nurse practitioner providers, and nursing students from Old Dominion University.
Carolyn Rutledge, associate president of Old Dominion University’s School of Nursing, says the clinic aims to provide care for 20 patients a day.
“You’re looking at 60 patients over the three-day period,” she said. “And that doesn’t include those we might be monitoring through telehealth.”
Although the mobile health clinic may look like an RV (because it is), when expanded, it includes two full patient rooms and a waiting room.
“You can do anything here that you could do in a normal doctor’s office,” Rutledge said. “You think of Virginia, and you think of all the rural areas, (so you assume) that we have to have great health care here. No, we don’t.”
The beds in both patient rooms are fitted with stirrups, which Rutledge said was purposely done to provide rural women with additional healthcare options.
According to the Virginia Department of Health, parts of Franklin and Southampton counties are considered maternity care deserts. This means that it takes an average of 47 minutes for women to see an OB-GYN.
When you combine a 47-minute drive time with the length of the actual appointment, Rutledge says most women, especially those in low-income areas, don’t have three hours to spend at the gynecologist. . This means, unfortunately, that for many rural women, their health care is often put on the back burner.
In addition to gynecology, the mobile healthcare clinic will also offer specialty pop-ups that will include physiotherapy, optometry and mental health services.
“We ranked 47th in the nation for adult mental health,” Rutledge said.
According to VDH, the median travel time to the nearest mental health services for a Franklin County resident is approximately 41 minutes. For Southampton residents, the median journey time is a bit longer, at 47 minutes.
Amanda Hudgins, the mobile clinic’s lead nurse practitioner, says this unfortunately means that mental health care is often overlooked, but then can manifest into other health issues.
“There are a lot of parallels between the obesity rate and the lack of mental health care,” she explained.
Hudgins will lead and direct the mobile clinic. When not hosting a specialist clinic, such as physiotherapy, Hudgins will be assisted by nurses studying at ODU to provide patient care.
According to the latest data from the Rural Health Information Hub, nurses are in high demand in rural Virginia. This is particularly true for Southampton County, which shows that there are fewer than three nurse practitioners per 10,000 Southampton residents.
Hudgins is from a rural area herself and hopes to inspire students to serve in areas with limited access to health care.
“This university program is committed to placing our students in underserved populations so they stay there,” she said. “Then they can be empowered to be part of this society and they can contribute to the whole.”
The mobile healthcare clinic has a price tag of $360,000, part of a $4 million grant Rutledge received to fund the service.
Rutledge says they plan to spread the word by parking outside schools and sending flyers home with the kids to let their parents know when the mobile clinic will be in their community.
“We can serve in parking lots,” she explained. “At Walmarts, we can go to trailer parks, we can go to school.”
The van also has a large QR code printed on the side. Residents can scan the code and see a schedule of the clinic’s upcoming travel plans and specialty clinics.
