Remote Area Medical is ceding management of the 20-year-old, three-day mobile health clinic in Wise, VA to The Health Wagon as it looks to launch new connected health clinics in more underserved communities.
A massive mobile health clinic held each year in rural Wise, VA is changing hands, as the non-profit that launched the mHealth program 20 years ago looks to extend its reach to other underserved communities.
Remote Area Medical (RAM), a Rockford, TN-based provider of free mobile health clinics offering dental, vision, medical, and veterinary services, announced this week that it’s discontinuing its leadership in the Wise clinic, a three-day clinic which serves more than 1,000 rural Virginians annually. The organization, which operates more than 60 clinics in Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, wants to focus its efforts on reaching more people in more rural communities.
RAM is leaving management of the Wise event to The Health Wagon, a mobile health service launched in 1980 that has worked alongside RAM for years. The event will be renamed the Move Mountains Medical Mission.
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“We feel it is the best use of RAM’s time and resources to focus on areas that lack the excellent health care that The Health Wagon, Mission of Mercy and other organizations are able to provide in Wise County,” RAM CEO Jeff Eastman said in a recent press release. “We are honored to have worked with The Health Wagon and Mission of Mercy in the past and to have served the Wise community.”
“The Health Wagon and the residents of the region are forever indebted to RAM, for they brought countless resources to patients in Wise, Virginia for 20 years,” Dr. Teresa Tyson, the Health Wagon’s Executive Director, said in the release.” We are honored to have worked with RAM and all the incredible partners who have made the largest health outreach of its kind in the nation possible year after year. This is a time of transition and The Health Wagon is planning to continue health outreach annually as the Move Mountains Medical Mission to provide free medical, dental, and vision services to patients in Wise and surrounding regions.”
Tyson, who’s spent more than a quarter of a century with the Health Wagon, has made the organization a national model for connected health. It has appearing in profiles on Inside Edition in 2005, on 60 Minutes in 2008, 2014 and 2016, on ABC Nightline in 2013 and on PBS Newshour and the UK newspaper The Guardian in 2016. It was also a key moment in presidential hopeful John Edwards’ 2007 campaign, when his visit was covered by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, PBS, CNN, CNBC, Fox News, AP News Wire, Time Magazine, ABC, NBC, CBS, Boston Globe and the Washington Post.
“These people not only can’t find these services, they can’t afford them,” she told mHealthIntelligence in an October 2017 story. “For us, it’s all about removing those barriers. When you’ve done that, then you’re going to get some good results.”
In its press release, RAM officials noted that the success of the clinics in Wise and nearby communities has led to a drop in the number of people seeking care at these events. This year’s three-day clinic, for instance, served 1,128 people, 200 less than the 2018 event.
“At the same time, RAM continues to receive dozens of clinic requests from communities across the country that, due to capacity, the organization is unable to fulfill,” the release noted.
Date: July 17, 2019
Source: mHealthIntelligence