Idaho ranks among the bottom of states with the lowest percentage of breast cancer screenings. It’s a statistic Clearwater Valley Health, a critical access hospital located in Orofino, Idaho, is determined to change.
Read on to find out how this finalist for the Cassling Imaging for Impact Award is changing lives across a massive geographic footprint in rural Idaho, all thanks to the innovative launch of a mobile mammography program and the tenacity of the small team who made it all possible.
Providing Care Where It’s Needed Most
When a neighboring community decommissioned its mobile mammography unit, Clearwater Valley Health quickly saw an opportunity to close the gap in preventive scans.
“We didn’t want our community to be underserved,” said Britney Summerfield (pictured above), the facility’s radiology manager. “So we worked tirelessly with fundraising and secured a grant, got leadership support and started our own mobile mammography unit.”
This is particularly impressive when considering that Clearwater has a mammography department of just two. Britney, in addition to her day-to-day work as a radiology manager, felt so strongly about this need in the community that she took on the planning, strategy and coordination of the mobile unit, working closely alongside the hospital’s CT technologist, Olivia, to build their program from the ground up.
Their goal? To bring essential breast cancer screenings directly to the patients in underserved areas of their healthcare system.
Overcoming Challenges in Rural Care
Serving rural communities often means covering a large geographic radius, and Clearwater Valley Health is no exception. Nestled among the high mountain prairies, the hospital serves about 3,000 residents and consists of two critical access hospitals and seven outlying clinics.
“We are the only critical access hospital on Highway 12, so really any service we can bring to the area is a huge benefit to our community,” said Britney.
Expansive geography isn’t the only challenge in serving smaller communities; trained expertise is also a notable barrier to providing care. When Britney and Olivia began the project, the hospital didn’t even have a trained mammography technologist to perform the scans.
“It was really hard to hire someone in our area because it’s not a service that’s offered. So we had to train Olivia, who was a CT tech but wanted to take on this program,” said Britney. “She’s been instrumental in helping us launch. She helped operationalize a service that didn’t exist in a completely new setting.”
Logistics and technical demands were also significant hurdles for the lean team. Coordinating mobile unit schedules, performing equipment maintenance and educating patients about the service all required thoughtful execution.
Bringing Mammography to the Masses
The impact of the unit was immediate. In the first two months of the mobile mammography program’s launch alone, it screened over 200 patients, allowing the hospital to reach a significant number of women who might otherwise have gone without screening.
“Because the service was in their community, they were able to get their screening done, which has actually led to an early diagnosis for some patients,” said Britney.
Even with the challenges of delivering imaging outside a hospital, the quality of care has never been compromised. And the hospital’s lead radiologist praised the images as some of the highest-quality images she’s ever seen.
Looking to the Future
Demand for the mobile unit has grown rapidly, with the mobile team performing upwards of 30 scans a day. To keep up, Clearwater Valley Health has expanded staff and capacity, proving that scale doesn’t define impact.
“Just because we’re a small hospital in rural Idaho doesn’t mean we can’t bring big services like other larger facilities offer,” said Britney.
Clearwater Valley Health’s proactive approach shows how innovation and determination can reshape healthcare access in rural America, increasing screening rates and, in this case, early detection of breast cancer. The work of Britney and Olivia demonstrates that neither geography nor infrastructure need to stand in the way of patients receiving world-class care.
We applaud their dedication and look forward to the continued impact of their mobile mammography program.
To learn more about the Imaging for Impact Award, click here!
Comments