Mosaic Medical hits the road

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Mosaic Medical’s new and improved mobile clinic is serving more communities than it ever has before.

Where before, a little van used to park in spots around Bend to offer medical services, now a large, converted recreational vehicle visits Culver, Prineville and Redmond, in addition to Bend.

Before Mosaic took on the RV, it used a van from Central Oregon Veterans Outreach.

“We inherited that van and some of their volunteers,” Elaine Knobbs, director of programs and development, said last month.

Meanwhile, Crook County bought its own RV for its health department to visit outlying areas, but it wasn’t getting much use. In July 2014, the county offered Mosaic Medical the vehicle for lease, and Mosaic took the opportunity.

Over the next year, Mosaic worked to get the RV running in good shape and make sure it had drivers ready to take on the behemoth. It also held a meeting in June 2015 for people connected with the homeless community — such as homeless liaisons with the school districts and staffers from local homeless shelters — to give input on where the RV could park to best serve Central Oregonians in need of medical care.

By November 2015, Mosaic Medical began using the RV regularly, and then, seven weeks ago, it launched expanded coverage. Tamarra Harris, outreach clinic manager, said Mosaic coordinated the mobile clinic’s schedule to coincide with ongoing services around Central Oregon.

For example, when the RV parks downtown off of Bond Street, free meals are provided that day at nearby United Methodist Church.

The goal, Harris and Knobbs explained, was to make the mobile clinic accessible. On Tuesdays, the RV parks at Culver School District, on Wednesdays at United Methodist Church in Bend, on Thursday mornings at Richi’s Place in Prineville and Thursday afternoons at Church of God Seventh Day in Redmond.

The mobile clinic offers primary and urgent care, immunizations, prescriptions and referrals for dental and mental health. Most private and commercial insurance and most Medicare is accepted, as well as all local Oregon Health Plan, or Medicaid coverage. Because Mosaic is a federally qualified clinic, at least half of the patients are on OHP. The clinic also accepts patients who are uninsured, offering a sliding payment scale for people with minimal or no insurance. Payments can also be waived for people who are suffering a hardship, such as homelessness.

The full-size converted RV can help three patients at a time, while more sit in a waiting area inside the RV.

The staff working the mobile clinic include Lisa Gladden-Kuettle, a family nurse practitioner who’s been with Mosaic for 11 years. As she and Knobbs pointed out, Mosaic staff members work to develop relationships with patients like other primary physicians do.

“We know that just medical care isn’t all someone needs to stay healthy,” Knobbs said.

Mosaic staff intend to serve patients’ “emotional” needs as well.

At most sites, about 75 percent of patients at the mobile clinics are homeless. But in Culver, for example, where there isn’t a brick-and-mortar Mosaic Medical clinic, many of the people served are families.

Knobbs said Mosaic staff would like to see the mobile clinic prevent people from visiting the emergency room when their conditions aren’t an emergency.

“That’s the hope,” she said.

— Reporter: 541-383-0325, kfisicaro@bendbulletin.com

Editor’s note: This article has been clarified to include information on how the clinic handles people without insurance.