The Intensive Health mobile unit serves five rural communities around Kentucky. This unit was a $2 million grant from the state Jonathan Fondow said. Photo by Michael Crimmins/Glasgow News 1.
By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
In the parking lot of Fuller Life Counseling Partners, located at 106 W. Front Street in Glasgow, sits a small, seemingly normal, white panel van. Despite its outward appearance, the inside of this van is anything but normal; it houses various medical equipment such as gloves, AEDs, blood-drawing equipment and a small room in the back for telecommunication.
This mobile unit is one of Intensive Health’s “innovative solution” to improve access to medical care throughout the commonwealth. Intensive Health is a part of stepworks, a Elizathbethtown-based company that aims at “helping people recover from addiction.” Jonathan Fondow, mobile unit data coordinator, said that while recovery is one goal of the unit, it is not the only service available.
“We’re not just in the recovery business,” Fondow said. “Recovery is obviously a very important piece for rural Kentucky, especially for the residents that don’t have the ability to seek recovery, but we do general medical services.”
According to Intensive Health’s website, the mobile unit also provides “medication-assisted treatment,” primary and general medical care, Hepatitis C screening and treatment and HIV screenings. Fondow said the hope would be to send someone to a pharmacy, or some other healthcare service, in the community should they need further assistance.
Fondow also said they provide mental health assistance with a tablet in the back of the van capable of telecommunicating with one of two available therapists in Elizabethtown.
“It’s so big right now in America,” Fondow said. “We’re trying to put the stigma behind us, so someone that needs to talk to someone can also go in the back of this mobile unit and speak to therapists.”
Glasgow is not the only stop during the week. Fondow said they are on the road “five days a week.” On Mondays they are at Fuller Life’s parking lot in Glasgow, Tuesdays they go to and set up in Hodgesville, Wednesday they are in Lebanon, Bardstown on Thursdays and Leitchfield on Fridays.
Fondow said at each of their five locations the mobile unit has partnered with a community business, like Fuller Life Counseling or the Larue County Health Center, in order to build trust and to provide patients with necessities, like aa waiting room inside away from the summer heat or restrooms.
“We’re an outsider coming into their community, so one thing we do is partner [and] gain the trust and confidence of the community,” Fondow said. “We want to represent the community well that we’re in.”
In addition to addiction recovery and other medical assistance, Fondow said, they could potentially help in other ways as well like providing gas cards or transportation if they need to seek assistance elsewhere.
“One of the big things that our patients have is a problem getting from point A to point B,” Fondow said. “If they don’t have a vehicle we also have volunteers in the area as well as with Intensive Health that could provide them with transportation if they need it.”
He also said the mobile unit helps a lot of homeless people who don’t have, or can’t get, medical insurance.
“So far, since we started last week, around 70% of our patients are homeless,” Fondow said. “They have nothing except their backpack that they’re carrying.”
Perhaps one of the most interesting services the unit offers, Fondow said, is the peer support where there is a designated person, who has been through addiction and recovery, can listen and relate to patients who may “just want to talk.”
Fondow said the mobile unit is through a 4-year federal grant of $2 million to help the people, primarily in rural areas, that are without insurance and either are forced to forego treatment or pay entirely out of pocket. In that same vein, he said, a goal of the unit was to get patients at least started on the path to Medicaid.
Currently, this is the only mobile health unit operated by Intensive Health.
“You hear a lot in the medical field about taking care to the patients and this mobile unit is doing that,” Fondow said.
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