On evenings and weekends when pediatric clinics in Salem are typically closed, Melissa Carter found it difficult to find health care for her sick children. It’s why Carter, who’s a nurse practitioner with over a decade of experience, started a mobile pediatric unit in December.
Carter drives around southern New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts, bringing healthcare to children when needed, often on weekends and into the night. She spoke with NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa about her work and the pediatric healthcare needs in her community.
Transcript
So what services does your mobile medical unit provide?
So right now it's pediatric mobile urgent care. We're doing anything from cold and flu symptoms and testing for RSV, strep, COVID, flu to minor lacerations, rashes, GI [gastrointestinal] sicknesses – really just sick visits to start.
And how did you decide on that, the scope of your services?
It really came down to being a mother. The time that my two boys always got sick was, like Friday at 5 p.m. or on the weekend when my pediatrician's office was closed. And I just could not get them into the pediatrician's office, so I was bringing them to a more generalized urgent care or even thinking about bringing them to the emergency room.
So you started this as a parent yourself, after seeing some of the needs that you had that weren't quite being met. What are you hearing from the parents you're working with about their needs?
So that's been the best part of this journey so far, in the past few months, is just how appreciative the parents are for me to come to them. I've had a lot of single parents or parents that have more than one child, and they either have been able to bring their other child on the van while I examine their sick child, or I've had a few parents that have even used like a baby monitor to keep an eye on a child that might be napping inside. And so I think the convenience aspect of it has been just a game changer for so many families, since they don't have to get the whole family or take time off of their job to bring them to the pediatricians or bring them to urgent care.
Melissa, in your experience, do you think there is a problem with access to child health care in New Hampshire?
I think there's some struggles with healthcare in general, not only for children, [but] for adults as well too. I've been asked a few times whether or not I plan to expand, to do well-child visits and to be more of a general pediatrician. I think that there's something to be said about a pediatrician in your community that knows you and your family and has seen your child grow older. But I think that when your child is sick and you don't have any place to bring them — except for maybe an emergency room where you're waiting for hours and your child may not actually have an emergency, [but] there's just no place else to bring them — I think that's where we struggle: the urgent care and the sick visits and after-hours or weekend visits. At least what I was finding is that there's really limited options.
So do you see this mobile clinic as filling a gap in the larger pediatric health system in New Hampshire?
I would love to. I think in New England in general, I found when I was doing lots of research that there really isn't anything like this. I'm based out of Salem, New Hampshire, and trying to keep my radius within a 30 minute drive from there. But I think it'd be great to have a few vans in more rural parts of New Hampshire that don't really have access to even an urgent care clinic that is for adults and pediatrics. I'd love to have one in more urban areas as well, just for families that might only be bringing their care to the emergency room because they can't get in. And so I have a few different visions, but I would love to have a few of these vans just to serve different areas of the state.
