When Demi Dorsey found out she was pregnant, she needed prenatal care fast.
But without insurance, finding an appointment wasn’t easy. Then someone
offered her something she never expected: a doctor’s office on wheels.

Through Demi’s experience and the remarkable story of Dr. Nancy Oriol,
founder of Boston’s Family Van and a pioneer in mobile healthcare, we
explore how a preventable medical emergency helped inspire a model of care
that has been bringing healthcare directly into communities for more than
three decades.

Along the way, we discover that mobile healthcare isn’t just about a
vehicle. It’s about access, trust, and meeting people where life is
happening.

Because sometimes the most important part of healthcare isn’t asking people
to come to care. It’s bringing care to them.

For some, getting to a doctor means a forty-minute drive without a car.
For others, it’s twelve-hour workdays in the fields, a language barrier,
or a healthcare system that’s difficult to navigate.

We travel from California’s Coachella Valley to rural South Carolina and
neighborhoods in Columbus, Ohio, to explore what access to healthcare
really means.

Through stories from Alejandro Espinoza, Kimberleigh Harris, Melisa Sims
Hammett, and Cornisha Waller, we discover that access isn’t simply about
whether healthcare exists. It’s about whether people can actually reach it,
trust it, and receive the care they need when they need it.

Sometimes closing that distance means healthcare has to do the traveling.

Coffee before sunrise. Equipment unpacked. A schedule that reads: 42 patients…and probably more.

What does it actually take to deliver healthcare on the move?

In this episode of Care In Motion: On The Road, Jeanette takes us into the field with two very different mobile healthcare programs: Denver Health and Comer Children’s Mobile Medical Unit at the University of Chicago Medicine.

From early-morning setup and the first patient of the day to navigating tight spaces, changing schedules, and packing up for the next stop, we experience the rhythms and realities of care on wheels.

Along the way, we see how each program meets the distinct needs of its community—and how consistency, flexibility, and trust can turn a mobile clinic into something more than a place to receive care. It can become a bridge to providers, follow-up services, and a healthcare system that may otherwise feel out of reach.

The clinic may leave at the end of the day.

But the connection it creates can go much further.

A health system has to believe in the idea. A funder has to invest in the
work. Community partners have to open doors. And trust often has to be
earned one visit at a time.

Through stories from Phillip Levy, Patrick Dineen, Krystal Stewart,
Whitney Young, Amelia Rukema, and Vickie Cranford-Lonquich, we go behind
the scenes of the relationships that make mobile healthcare possible.

We explore what it takes to turn an idea into a lasting program, build
partnerships that go beyond a single grant, and earn trust in the
communities mobile clinics serve.

Because funding can help put a clinic on the road. Partnerships help keep
it there. And trust is what makes people walk through the door.

The clinics that last aren’t just well-funded. They’re well-rooted.

Mobile clinics are reaching people traditional healthcare systems can
struggle to reach. But the way they’re funded, reimbursed, and regulated
wasn’t always designed with a clinic on wheels in mind.

Phillip Levy, Patrick Dineen, and Elizabeth Kielb take us inside the
funding and policy challenges that can determine whether a mobile clinic
thrives, struggles, or sits idle.

We explore reimbursement, billing, sustainability, and the new
partnerships, technologies, and approaches that are changing what’s
possible.

Mobile healthcare has spent years learning how to work within a system
that wasn’t necessarily designed for it.

So what could be possible if the system began designing for mobile healthcare, too?

After a season spent traveling alongside patients, providers, and
communities, we close by looking ahead. What have we learned? What’s
standing in the way? And what will it take to make mobile healthcare a
sustainable, integrated part of how care is delivered?

Dr. Nancy Oriol, founder of Boston’s Family Van and a pioneer in mobile
healthcare, joins Don Blanchon, longtime healthcare executive and
co-founder of Driving Health Forward, to explore where mobile healthcare
goes from here.

Together, they reflect on the lessons learned over decades of bringing
care directly into communities, why trust remains one of mobile
healthcare’s greatest strengths, and how mobile healthcare can expand its
reach without losing the relationships that make it work.

From funding and policy to technology, partnerships, and the people behind
the work, we look at what’s possible when healthcare is designed to reach
people where they are.

And we end the season where we began—with a simple but powerful idea:

Sometimes the most important step in healthcare is the one it takes toward us.