An Unsuccessful Attempt with a Pop-Up Clinic
On a recent sunny March day, Cheryl McFarland, who doesn’t own a car, walked to the Southwest Medical, Health Plan of Nevada and Sierra Health and Life’s “Medicine on the Move,” a large truck with a pop-up clinic for medical health care inside. McFarland had to make several stops to catch her breath before arriving by foot because she has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), a lung disease that results in increased breathlessness.
“I mean the normal person, if they can breathe, it’s probably about 15, 20 minutes. It takes me a good hour,” she said of making it to the clinic. The distance between the Lake Mill Lodge where she lives and where the truck was, on 40 E 4th Street, was a half mile.
“I get kind of upset because I can't breathe and I just want to get things done,” she said.
Cheryl waited inside the bus but then her insurance was not accepted and she wasn’t able to refill her inhaler as she hoped. Medicine on the Move is headquartered in Las Vegas. They parked at different locations during a recent trip to Reno including near the Record street homeless shelter.
Trying to Refill Her Inhaler and in a Bad Spiral
McFarland’s inhaler had been empty for over a week and she was hoping Medicine on the Move would get her out of her current jam. However, after waiting inside, McFarland had to leave empty handed because they didn’t accept her insurance, SilverSummit Health Plan.
So it was a lot of energy spent on her part with no gain.
“I'm trying to move with a little cart and I’m trying to carry stuff and do that because I have no vehicle and I'm trying to move and it's just, it's really hard because there's a lot of stopping on the way,” she said.
Over the past year, McFarland says she has missed four appointments at Renown due to being late and her inability to get to places as fast as she should, she said, further compounding her problems.