Peninsula Community Health Services has kept the pedal to the metal since 2019 when it comes to offering a variety of crucial medical services at locations outside of the traditional set-in-place hospitals and clinics.
The PCHS Mobile Healthcare Fleet began roughly a year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and has expanded to as many as 11 mobile vehicles as of February according to PCHS CEO Dr. Jennifer Kreidler-Moss. The increase in vehicles has allowed for a variety of services such as medical, behavioral health and dental clinics, pediatric care, Peninsula and Bremerton Ambulatory Teams and a Quick Response Team to operate on wheels across and outside Kitsap.
Yet in the midst of its growth, an understanding of the communities and their present needs are influencing more than ever the types of vehicles being brought in to serve prospective patients.
“Our community really does have a housing problem,” said Kreidler-Moss, citing the growing homelessness crisis in Bremerton and the surrounding communities, “and so what we found in our model is that it’s important that we get to bring care of all our types to where our patients spend their day.”
Vehicles such as PCHS’ first bus, a 38-foot giant introduced in March of 2019, have made the idea of offering healthcare to those who do not seek care in the traditional brick-and-mortar setting a reality. However, services are becoming even more accessible on a simpler scale with smaller vehicles such as the organization’s new mobile healthcare van, donated by Wellpoint Washington and delivered to Bremerton Feb. 21.
“We go to a lot of shelters with this size of vehicle because it is a smaller group of people that we see there, but we see them more frequently,” said mobile and school-based health care manager Cindy Hare-Willis. “So, we bring the smaller ones because it’s in and out and so much easier to park those vans.”
“More people can drive a smaller unit,” added Kreidler-Moss. “It’ll allow us a lot of flexibility in terms of who can go out.”
Vice president of the PCHS Board of Directors Al Pinkham said the addition of the smaller van to the fleet will make the mobile health services that much more accessible for patients who remain hesitant in visiting the likes of PCHS’s in-building clinics or hospitals like St. Michael Medical Center.
“We have clinics all over Kitsap County, but many people will not go into those clinics. You park the van in the right location, and they come.”
A brief look inside the newest addition to the fleet has the very feel of a typical doctor’s office, clean and inviting with a full array of basic doctor’s tools and equipment hung on the wall. Hare-Willis said this van is the first of its size to also have an actual exam table, and Kreidler-Moss confirmed that it will be the smallest vehicle thus far in its entire fleet with that specific addition.
“We tend to not do, like, heavy-based procedure work in it like stitches and stuff. This one is fairly varied, though, because it can do outreach, it can do exams and almost anything besides dental,” she said.
The vehicle’s donation is the latest growth in the organization’s mobile care fleet, though finances have become a concern despite the donation saving PCHS around a quarter-million dollars according to Kreidler-Moss.
“The program itself runs at a loss,” she said, though unable to specify how much at the time. “However, we think that it’s important to the overall mission of Peninsula that we run the program for our patients. It’s important for the community that we go and meet people where they are.”
