By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — PrairieStar Health Center showed off its fully equipped mobile medical clinic manufactured by Collins Bus on Wednesday. The idea for the two to collaborate began with a grant PrairieStar received from the federal government.
"I believe this one came out of something called the ECT (Expanding Capacity for Coronavirus Testing)," said PrairieStar CEO Bryant Anderson. "This is essentially out of the CARES Act, I think it's the round two of that."
The team at PrairieStar wanted to use the grant in a way that would help both local patients and the local economy. Fortunately, Collins Bus was looking for business.
"We used to build commercial shuttles for airports and hotels," said Chris Hiebert, Vice President/General Manager of Collins Bus. "That section of our business was divested out and we were no longer in a position where we could build commercial products, so we were looking for another product that would fill our seasonal ups and downs that come with our base business, which is building Type A school buses."
The reason a mobile clinic was thought of has to do with PrairieStar's Chief Quality Officer, Mona Broomfield, RN.
"I was raised in Sylvia," Broomfield said. "Sylvia is 30 to 35 miles and to people that live in some of those small communities, it might as well be 350 miles to get to medical care. There was always a vision that we could take medical to Plevna, Sylvia, Turon, you know, Langdon, those places."
Anderson believes the clinic will be on the road next month. For Collins, this is the beginning of what they are hoping will be an active product line with up to 25 units sold next year, but they are just delivering three in 2021. PrairieStar got their unit earlier this spring, but just got it wrapped and equipped recently, another unit was delivered out east this month and Johnson County will get the third unit later in the year.
"Whatever we think of, we can do," Broomfield said. "Granted, we're not going to have extensive things like radiology, but the majority of chronic diseases can be cared for on our mobile unit. I could see potentially setting up at a school for enrollment for anybody that doesn't have their immunizations done."
The goal for Collins is job retention, so that those employees who were in the commercial shuttle product line can switch over to this line and remain employed.
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