Efforts to bring medical care into underserved parts of Southwest Michigan are proving successful, according to Cass Family Clinic CEO Joseph Gavan.
He told the Cass County Commissioners Thursday that the organization’s mobile clinic has seen more than 900 patients since it went into service last November. "We are increasing our volumes 40-percent, month over month," Gavan said. "At some point, we’ll max out, but right now, the growth is incredible, and it’s much more than we expected at this point."
Gavan said the mobile clinic provides medical and behavioral health services. “We have found that, actually, the behavioral health patients feel much more comfortable in this more intimate setting than they do coming into some of our brick-and-mortar clinics and waiting in the large waiting room,” Gavan noted.
The mobile clinic has also been used for sports physicals and dental checkups at local schools.
Going forward, Gavan said Cass Family Clinic will soon add a mobile waiting room with wheelchair-accessible examination space to go along with the mobile clinic, a bus garage and a prescription delivery program. "That was a decision that was driven largely by the fact that we have the mobile clinic," Gavan explained, "and if we’re going to patients and taking care of them but they can’t get their prescriptions, then it kind of defeats a lot of the purpose."
The mobile clinic was funded, in part, by Cass County’s share of opioid settlement money. The commissioners Thursday also agreed to provide $50,000 in opioid funding to the Ontwa Township-Edwardsburg Police Department, to help with the cost of a new K9 unit. The county has provided a similar grant to the sheriff’s office.
