Carle Health is bringing a 40-foot mobile health care clinic to McLean County to help close care gaps, offering two exam rooms, and providing services such as wellness checks, school physicals, and social support throughout the county.
Currently, McLean and Vermillion counties rely on service from a Champaign-Urbana mobile health clinic, but this new unit will be dedicated to McLean and could be operational as early as August.
The decision was made in part due to lack of access to care and the high number of residents in west Bloomington who go untreated for health and mental health issues, according to a news release from Carle Health.
David Taylor, CEO of United Way of McLean County, a funding partner, said McLean County’s mobile clinic will operate like Champaign-Urbana’s, traveling throughout the county to provide care. A schedule and locations for the new unit are forthcoming.
Champaign-Urbana’s mobile clinic is loaned to the senior residence Wood Hill Towers in Bloomington once a month, where Carle BroMenn Medical Center president Colleen Kannaday said it has had a positive impact.
“Patients have received comprehensive care and services in that location, and we’ve actually seen the fastest uptick of patients building trust,” she said.
Kannaday said the next step is to provide a “dedicated schedule of where the mobile medical unit would go on a consistent basis.”
This way, she said, residents “can build relationships with the team, know when they’re gonna be there to be able to consistently have a place where they and their family and their friends can go to receive care.”
It cost roughly $750,000 to get the new mobile health clinic operational. Besides United Way, other funding partners include the City of Bloomington, McLean County, the Town of Normal, The Tinervin Family Foundation, and Laborers International Union of North America.
