Sutter’s mobile health clinic to provide care services to the uninsured

Uninsured residents in Merced County soon will have a new option when seeking medical services.

Sutter Health, the parent company of Memorial Hospital Los Banos and Memorial Medical Center in Modesto, will roll out a mobile health clinic come summer.

The mobile health clinic will provide annual physicals, basic health care for issues such as colds and headaches, immunizations, standard lab tests and resource assistance.

Juanita Garza-Castro, a regional manager at Sutter Health, presented the mobile health clinic to local health leaders at Thursday’s Merced County Health Care Consortium meeting.

Garza-Castro explained that the mobile clinic will offer free primary care services to the uninsured and to high-risk populations.

“We suspect the insured already have a primary care provider,” Garza-Castro said during the consortium meeting. “We want to serve those that don’t.”

The mobile clinic aims to cover at least 12 communities in three Valley counties where Sutter Health hospitals are located: Merced, Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties.

In Merced County, the mobile clinic will target rural areas, such as Dos Palos, the Beachwood-Franklin area and Le Grand. But the locations have not been set in stone.

Garza-Castro said the mobile clinic is a need in this area because there are still large populations without insurance.

There are several reasons why people continue to lack insurance, she said. This could be because they think they cannot afford it or because they don’t qualify for coverage due to their undocumented status.

Although the exact launch date is tentative, Sutter Health hopes to get the mobile unit out in the community by August.

Isidro Ramirez, the mobile health clinic coordinator, said staff members are working on a schedule rotation for the three counties. He expects the mobile clinic will serve a minimum of 240 patients per year.

Ramirez and Garza-Castro explained that with the mobile health clinic, Sutter Health expects to reduce the number of people using emergency rooms for primary care.

“We want to educate the community that they don’t always have to visit the emergency room,” Garza-Castro said. She explained that staffers will focus education on diabetes, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

For more information on the mobile health clinic, people can call (209) 530-3489.

This story was originally published May 7, 2015 at 5:06 PM with the headline "Sutter’s mobile health clinic to provide care services to the uninsured."