A new 38-foot Community Care Coach is the first mobile primary care and OB-GYN unit at Ohio State, and it will serve patients in seven locations around Columbus, Ohio. The wheelchair-accessible bus includes two exam rooms, a waiting room and a point-of-care testing lab, Christine Harsh, director of ambulatory services at the Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State, said.
“For a lot of our outpatient units, we have brick-and-mortar clinics that are around the city,” Harsh said. “But we really wanted a strategy to get into neighborhoods and meet our patients where they are.”
According to a 2017 American Hospital Association report, 3.6 million people in the United States don’t obtain health care each year because they lack reliable transportation. This increases health care costs and leads to poorer health outcomes, according to the report.
“We’re taking away some of the barriers, like transportation to care, so that [patients] have more regular access to getting the clinical services they need and improving their health outcomes,” Harsh said.
The care coach joins three other Ohio State mobile units, which include a dentistry unit, a mobile kitchen and a mobile mammography unit. Harsh said it will provide primary care, such as vaccines, physical exams, blood tests, and prenatal and postpartum care for mothers.
The Community Care Coach is a wheelchair-accessible mobile unit that has two exam rooms and a waiting room. Credit: Mackenzie Shanklin | Lantern Reporter
Kamilah Dixon-Shambley, an OB-GYN at the medical center and assistant professor of clinical OB-GYN, said the care coach has partnered with Moms2B, an education program for mothers with the goal of reducing the infant mortality rate in Franklin County.
According to a report from the city of Columbus, Franklin County’s infant mortality rate was 6.5 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2019, but priority areas — such as Linden, the Near South Side, Hilltop and Franklinton — had 9.6 deaths per 1,000. Nationally, the infant mortality rate is 5.7 per 1,000, according to the most recent data in 2017 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The care coach will visit three Moms2B sites in Weinland Park, North Columbus and Linden, Dixon-Shambley said.
“Someone who is pregnant, maybe with multiple other kids at home, no access to transportation or even money for transportation, they’re not going to make it to their prenatal appointments,” Dixon-Shambley said. “So the fact that we can go somewhere, that’s reliable and they know that we’ll be there — they can come and get the care that they need.”
The care coach accepts all insurances, including Medicaid, and staff on the unit can help patients apply for temporary Medicaid, Kelsey Meadows, practice manager for the care coach, said.
The care coach has also partnered with Ohio State financial counselors to help patients apply for full Medicaid insurance, Meadows said.
Dixon-Shambley said the care coach staff will not charge patients without insurance for treatment.
“We will see patients in the community regardless of their ability to pay,” she said. “Whether you have insurance or if you don’t have insurance, you don’t have to be shy to get on the coach. We will see you and take care of you.”
Community Care Coach will be open five days a week from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Locations include the Moms2B sites in Weinland Park, North Columbus and Linden, as well as Ohio State’s African American and African Studies Community Extension Center, and the Martin Luther King and Shepard branches of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, according to the care coach website. An additional location in Franklinton has not been finalized yet.
