Providence mobile clinic fleet expanding in Sonoma County, filling medical gap

Dressed in blue medical scrubs and carrying a clip board, Jessica Quintal, made her way through rows of beds and bunks at Sam L. Jones Hall, the Santa Rosa homeless shelter, warmly greeting nearly every resident by name.

She stopped to talk with any needing medical assistance, some of them in wheel chairs, lying in their beds or milling about the complex, nursing abscess wounds, infections or medical conditions associated with chronic illness such as heart disease or diabetes.

Quintal, a former addict who used to be homeless, now works as a medical assistant with the mobile clinic team for Providence, one of the North Bay’s largest health care providers. She said her past allows her to better relate with those who are living on the streets.

“It allows me to connect with people in a different way because of the experience that I’ve had in my own life,” she said.

In Sam Jones’ expansive tent annex, erected during the pandemic’s deadly 2020-21 winter, Quintal and Providence nurse practitioner Jennifer Eid-Ammons assessed the condition of a man lying on his side, languid.

His voice was barely audible as he answered their questions.

“Are you feeling OK? Are you taking your medications?” they asked. Quintal jotted down notes in her clipboard, preparing for their next visit with the man.

The mobile clinic team now run by Providence was launched in 1991 by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, the order of nuns that helped build Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.

It was designed to bring free health care to vulnerable residents who live in areas where health care resources are scarce or not as plentiful as the county’s urban core. It continues to be free.

Growing fleet

In recent years, the mobile health care fleet has grown to four vehicles, including a new 2-exam room mobile clinic that is essentially a 40-foot RV; another mobile clinic in a smaller 25-foot box truck; a “Sprinter van” clinic that’s used for hard-to-reach rural locations; and a dental clinic also in a large RV type vehicle.

Providence, which owns and operates Memorial Hospital after a 2016 merger with St. Joseph Health, next year will add another dental clinic, a 25-foot box truck, bringing its mobile care fleet to five.

Dana Codron, Providence’s senior director of community health and investments for Northern California, said the mobile team continues to operate with the same vision that started the program — providing health where the need is greatest.

“Our founding sisters were trailblazers more than 30 years ago when they first launched our mobile dental and our mobile health clinics,” Codron said, adding that over the years the mobile clinic team’s “focus” has changed over the years to meet the changing needs of the local community.

Today, one of the team’s major priorities is bridging health equity gaps. That includes doing outreach in underserved, Latino immigrant and farmworker communities and the county’s ever present unhoused communities.

In Sonoma County, the mobile team focuses on serving uninsured and underinsured population, providing an array of services that include treatment of minor medical conditions, limited chronic disease management, health screenings, immunizations. The team also provides education on nutrition and health and information and referrals to community resources.

The team’s lead medical assistant Jackie Williams, who’s been with the mobile team since the early 1990s, said some of the patients they serve have a primary care “medical home” but are unable to schedule timely medical appointments.

In those cases, she said, she and other mobile team members will reach out providers to help expedite necessary care. All the members of the mobile clinic team speak Spanish and they all know how to drive the hulking vehicles.

Over the years, the team has seen it all, Williams said. “We’ve had live bugs coming out of people’s ears,” said Williams, who many years ago worked for the International Red Cross.

Preempting emergency visits

One of the main goals of mobile clinic team is providing care to those who might otherwise end up in one of several hospital emergency departments in the region, Codron said.

“If we are able to provide a breathing treatment for someone who is short of breath because of asthma at a shelter, that is avoiding either an emergency room visit or a call to 911,” she said.

One morning earlier this month the 40-foot mobile clinic was parked in the lot of Resurrection Parish in west Santa Rosa. Williams checked in patients in a small church conference room before sending them into the clinic vehicle.

While half the staff cared for patients at Resurrection, Eid-Ammons and Quintal shot over to Sam Jones Hall in the team’s Sprinter van, which also is equipped with a table and chairs for spot health assessments.

Outside the shelter’s main hall, they encountered Tamara Trinidad, 49, in a wheelchair, her left leg swollen, discolored with reddish hues. Quintal comforted Trinidad as Eid-Ammons dressed the wound with new bandages.

Trinidad said she has congestive heart failure that causes her to retain water. “My leg split open from the water retention. It was full,” she said, adding that she got the wound two weeks before arriving at the shelter.

Trinidad said she appreciated the mobile clinic team’s care. “It makes it so much easier because of not being able to get places,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.