For the second full week in January, women in Saratoga will have a chance to get a mammogram without having to drive out of town and could get some help covering the cost.
Through the Wyoming Women First Program, a collaboration among GE, the State of Wyoming and Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a “mammovan” equipped with a mobile, state of the art mammography unit will be parked at the Platte Valley Medical Clinic from Jan. 7 to Jan. 11.
“GE provided the funding for a mammo-tech, the mobile mammography unit and the van to run in Wyoming for a year,” Joanna Kail, owner of Wyoming Inc., a marketing and public relations firm that is helping to coordinate the year-long tour, said.
According to a 2010 Center of Disease Control study, Wyoming breast screening rates rank among the lowest in the U.S. at 48th place.
Kail said those low rates are attributable to four main factors: education, awareness, access and cost.
In a spread out and rural state like Wyoming, distance can be a significant barrier. According to the Wyoming Department of Health, the average distance to a mammography screening facility in Wyoming is 70 miles.
The “mammovan” helps to address all four factors and will easily eliminate distance.
Conna McGuire, patient care coordinator at the clinic, said there is funding available to defray the cost for those who are underinsured or uninsured.
Two nonprofit groups, Wyoming Foundation for Cancer Care and The Caring Foundation of Wyoming, received a $1.2 million grant from Susan G. Komen for the Cure to help women without insurance.
Because of its rural destinations, the van has its own internet network and a satellite dish so images can be transported instantly.
Those images won’t have to go too far.
GE and its partners wanted to stay local and to that end three clinics in the state will be reading the exams: the Cheyenne Radiology group, New Frontier Imaging in Rock Springs and Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County.
“That way, all the primary care providers can work with local in-state radiologists,” Kail said.
Women will have to have an order from a local provider, someone the radiologists can discuss results with.
“If they are established with (the clinic), we have standing orders for them,” McGuire said.
“The mammograms are just like annual screenings,” McGuire said. “They are not diagnostic.”
“We are so exited about the clinic in Saratoga, they bent over backwards to make this happen,” Kail said. “We already have three women scheduled.”
The “mammovan” is only funded to travel throughout Wyoming for a year, but Kail would like to see it operate on a more permanent basis.
“For GE alone, it is only a one-year shot,” Kail said. To go on longer, “we would need to find mechanisms to find funding.”
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