Community Care’s patient population tends to struggle to reach routine healthcare services, such as preventive screenings. These patients — who live in the midst of Appalachia — reside in remote, rural areas and often lack access to adequate transportation.
“If you don’t think you have breast cancer, driving to the city to get a mammogram is a tough sell,” Sarah Chouinard, MD, chief medical officer of Community Care, told athenaInsight.
To address the issue, Community Care analyzes EHR data from across its network of 49 primary care and school-based clinics and offices to determine locations where mammogram screening rates are unusually low. Once a clinic is flagged as performing a low amount of mammogram screenings, Community Care dispatches Bonnie’s Bus, a mobile mammography unit, to the area.
Bonnie’s Bus, operated in partnership with Morgantown-based West Virginia University School of Medicine, brings breast cancer screenings to locations where patients live and work throughout the region, according to athenaInsight.
Since the program launched in 2009, Bonnie’s Bus has provided more than 11,000 mammograms to women throughout West Virginia.
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