By Shannon Fiecke, Staff Writer 

Last fall, a $2 million, 16-wheel mobile unit with leather seats, computers, flat-screen televisions and state-of-the-art medical technology rolled from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Dakota Community and into the Red Lake Band of Chippewa reservation.

The unit parked across the street from a school and set up shop to provide dental care to students who hadn’t seen the dentist in several years. A crew of dental professionals greeted them and conducted routine check-ups, cleanings, polishing, preventative treatments, sealants and fluoride treatments, while working for two days to supplement the existing dental care at Indian Health Service and clinics.

Now the mobile truck, which has primarily served American Indian reservations, will be heading out into local streets to serve underinsured residents.

This fall, public health nurses and the county’s medical director will offer basic health services through the clinic to residents in need in Shakopee, Savage and Jordan, where there are large populations of uninsured and underinsured people.

The tribe is donating the use of the clinic, as well as a driver and a mammogram technician.

People can receive immunizations and be seen for basic health assessments and tests, such as for glucose levels, cholesterol, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy and blood pressure. The county plans to add services and more stopping locations over time.

Scott County Public Health Director Jennifer Deschaine said the mobile clinic builds on services the county presently offers at its facilities and through a local nursing home.

Tribal Wellness Administrator Joanna Bryant said the tribe has been trying to meet a need in the American Indian community, where people may not have access to or money for services, screening women in their late 50s who’ve never had a mammogram.

It’s the Dakota people’s culture to help others, and the tribe is excited to now be able to help Scott County with its endeavor, Bryant said.

“How could the tribe not?” she said.

Deschaine said it’s been the county’s vision to expand what it offers and bring basic health services to people where they live. Oftentimes, residents have limited transportation.

“We have communities, like Jordan, that have no clinic or pharmacy,” she said.

The mobile clinic will not offer ongoing medical care, but it will help residents apply for government medical insurance programs and connect them with St. Mary’s and other local clinics that target uninsured or underinsured patients.

Hospitals and pharmacies also are donating supplies and over-the-counter medicines for the clinic on wheels.

The county hopes to eventually add refugee health screening and follow-up visits with uninsured tuberculosis patients, as well as provide dental care for medical-assistance clients who often have trouble finding a clinic to take them.

Deschaine said there are other mobile clinics, but this is the first one she’s aware of in the Twin Cities and certainly the first unit that’s a partnership between a county public health department and a tribe.

“It is a huge partnership for us,” she said. “We wouldn’t be able to realize this vision without their assistance.”

The mobile unit will build on the work the tribe already is doing, bringing medical professionals to other tribes and performing mammograms in a contract with the women’s correctional facility in Shakopee and providing services to prison in Waseca.

“We work with a lot of different groups,” Bryant said.

The clinic deploys a couple of times per month both locally and to various reservations throughout the state to provide medical screening. In its inaugural year in 2008, the mobile unit was dedicated mostly to providing mobile mammography tests, screening more than 500 women.

This year, the unit is extending beyond breast cancer screenings to include dental care, diabetes education and lead screenings in urban and reservation communities across the state, as well as setting up mobile clinics in Scott County to provide health care to diverse neighborhoods in need.

Since October, the unit has performed more than 800 mammograms.The 76-foot-long unit features five emergency response suites, a chest X-ray machine, a wheelchair lift, Wi-Fi technology, satellites, nine surveillance cameras, flat-screen televisions on both the inside and outside of the trailer, a 40-kilowatt generator that can provide power for seven days, a 9,000-watt light for search-and-rescue scenes, wireless cameras to assist SWAT teams and a mobile mammography suite with digital technology that creates less compression on women during the test, among a plethora of other amenities, Muelken said.

In addition to the two radiology suites (one for mammography and one for chest X-ray) that provide screening for breast and lung cancers, the rest of the unit contains a laboratory to screen patients for prostate cancer, diabetes and other illnesses.

Upon entrance to the mobile unit, there is a large open space that can serve multiple functions, such as a temporary dental clinic one day and an emergency medical treatment area the next.

Other functions

Make no bones about it, the unit is a full mobile clinic, but it’s also capable of being a central command center in case of a local or regional emergency, said Jim Muelken, director of Mdewakanton Emergency Services.

As an incident command unit, the trailer has the space and technical capabilities for tactical planning for coordinating services in case of a large-scale emergency, including the ability to patch into any dispatch throughout the state with 800 MHz radios, telephones, satellite and visual recording of the emergency scene, Muelken said.

During the Republican National Convention, the unit was used as the Mobile Incident Command Center by the St. Paul Fire Department. It also has been used by a local SWAT team and the Morrison County Sheriff’s Department for training.

While the unit is extravagant, its mission is to help others in a time of need, Muelken said.

“You need something cool when something bad happens,” he said. “From [body] cells to catastrophes, this vehicle can handle both and everything in between. It can be used to predict illness or respond to a local tornado. Every inch of this vehicle is used, and it really does change lives.”

The tribe is providing mammography, dental, diabetes and lead screenings by working with health departments locally, as well as on reservations and urban Indian communities across the state.

“It’s a huge difference to the people we help to have a nice, comfortable and clean lab to be seen in, as opposed to having no options or going to clinics they have in the past. We know we are going to places where people don’t have access to this type of thing,” Bryant said.

The high rates of all types of cancer in tribal communities, as well as the need for on-site services to improve health screening rates for earlier detection of problems, led to the development of the mobile unit, said James Lien, a tribal health administrator.

The latest technology allows for mammograms to be stored electronically aboard the mobile unit and then downloaded and read upon return. Results are then sent directly to patients and their medical providers, Lien said.

Now the unit will venture into Scott County cities to assist in areas where certain ethnic groups may need care, Lien said.

“In a lot of cases, these groups of people won’t go to clinics, so we will bring the clinic to them,” Lien said.

Shannon Fiecke can be reached at (952) 345-6679 or sfiecke@swpub.com. Shawn Hogendorf contributed to this story.