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Project Rural Recovery rolls out mobile health clinics to help rural communities with medical needs

The "doctor's office on wheels" will serve five counties in East Tennessee: Claiborne, Cocke, Grainger, Hancock and Jefferson.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Rural communities have a high need for necessary medical care, but the resources aren't always readily available. A new mobile project is aiming to fill in the gaps.

The McNabb Center is preparing to hit the road with a new mobile health clinic. It's called "Project Rural Recovery." The bus is renovated to look like a doctor's office.

The unit will provide necessary medical, mental and substance abuse care to five East Tennessee counties who are underserved: Claiborne, Cocke, Grainger, Hancock and Jefferson.

The bus is a gateway to expanding medical care in rural communities. Shellie Hall, McNabb's senior director of outpatient services for Blount, Sevier and Cocke Counties, said it allows the McNabb Center to expand beyond its four walls. 

“It’s something we’ve never been able to do before, taking our services to communities that we have never had brick and mortar buildings in before, and it’s taking services to clients who have the least resources,” Hall explained.

It's funded by the state Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, through a new grant provide by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA.

"So in our rural communities, we tend to see that individuals have a harder time getting access to services, whether it's barriers of lack of services or transportation," Jessica Ivey, the director of strategic initiatives for the state office said. "We saw this as an opportunity to actually create a mechanism in which a mobile bus is placed into the community to ensure that people had access."

With hospitals in more rural areas closing and the COVID-19 pandemic taking hold, access to proper health care is more critical than ever.

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The state and McNabb Center want to help make the bus the "first stop." The staff onboard will assess the needs of each patient on the unit, assess if the needs can be met in the moment, and evaluate where to go from there.

The staff is able to make recommendations for additional services in the area, working as partners to hospitals and doctor's offices that are currently in the community.

Clients are able to make recurring visits to the bus if necessary.

“You go in rural communities and you can see how they just so want to have services in their community and the challenges they have of obtaining those services from transportation or insurance, so for me it’s so so exciting to be able to take this to them and say there is no barriers," Hall smiled. "We want you to come on the bus, we want to help you access services, whether it’s here on the bus or we can connect you with a provider in the community who can best serve you.”

On the bus, there is a waiting area and two multipurpose rooms that can be used for evaluations and treatment.

The overall goal of the project is to give access to care across the state and create healthier communities.

"We thought this was really the best to pave the way and make sure that our most needy Tennesseans are receiving that level of care," Ivey explained.

The McNabb Center plans to park the bus in each of the five counties one day of every week.

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Each rural community is different, so in the first weeks and months of the Project Rural Recovery rollout, McNabb Center will take recommendations and adjust the way each community is served, based on feedback from clients.

There's another bus that will serve Middle-West Tennessee, operated by Buffalo Valley. The buses are expected to roll out November 16. 

To schedule appointments when the buses hit the road, or to get help from McNabb Center, you can call (800) 255-9711.

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