Donna Meddish, of Bend, has lived with a benign brain tumor for 10 years. Doctors are wary about the tumor growing, so the 78-year-old has her blood drawn weekly to monitor her organs and potassium level.

But now, Meddish worries about how she’s going to get her required lab work done.

She’s used St. Charles Bend’s mobile lab service for more than three years since becoming homebound with a wheelchair because of hip injuries. But since Sunday, the mobile phlebotomist is no longer serving patients at home.

“It was just a great service,” Meddish said. “Now, what’s going to happen to people in their homes? Will they have to move into institutional facilities?”

That is something Meddish wants to avoid. Though she employs a 24-hour in-home caregiver willing to help with her transportation, Meddish said she’s not able to transfer from her powerchair to their private vehicle. Her only option, she said, is to use public transportation to go to the clinic.

But even that is a risk, Meddish said. Many patients choose to stay home because of the weather, the cost of transportation or reluctance to be around sick people out of fear of contagions or in air-conditioned buildings, which can put them at risk of flu or pneumonia.

Dan Streck, the director of lab services at St. Charles Bend, said the health care industry uses mobile labs to serve assisted living facilities, skilled nursing homes and jails. Through the first half of 2012, those facilities accounted for 85 to 90 percent of service calls.

Streck said while the program has averaged between one and two blood draws at private homes per day from January through April, the mobile phlebotomist has reported many home patients are not homebound.

“Our experience is that most of these patients are not truly homebound,” Streck said. “It’s not that they don’t have challenges that make it more difficult for them to go out to our public draw sites. But it’s pretty costly to stick somebody in a car and have them travel to a location for patients who might not necessarily (be homebound).”

Assessment began several months ago of whether serving private homes was something that still made sense, Streck said. St. Charles Bend came to the conclusion that it wants to orient the program to its original industry purpose.

Notices about the changes were sent to patients about a month ago, according to Streck, and the mobile phlebotomist is moving from full-time to part-time.

The hospital encourages patients to actively use the outpatient draw facilities, such as the lab inside the Heart Center in the main hospital and the east-side facility on Kim Lane.

Streck said the hospital is willing to work with physicians to create appropriate plans if a patient has extenuating circumstance.

“From my experience, all the doctors I’ve ever had do what they can to help keep you in your own home, to not go into a residential community,” Meddish said. “I thought that was St. Charles’ philosophy, but this particular action doesn’t follow that.”