After several years of serving the community admirably, the Bon Secours Hampton Roads Care-A-Van is making improvements that will allow it to provide even more services to even more people.

The Care-A-Van is a mobile clinic that visits Suffolk every Friday. On the first Friday of the month, it sets up shop from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Hoffler Apartments on East Washington Street. The other Fridays, it comes to the Salvation Army on Bank Street.

The Care-A-Van has been a regular visitor to Suffolk for several years, and in that time has had a significant effect in the community. In 2016 alone, the health care professionals on the van saw 842 patients in Suffolk, who were eligible to receive free care if they were uninsured.

While the van sees patients with acute illnesses, many patients need help managing chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. Through the Care-A-Van, they have gotten the assistance they needed, including medications through the Care-A-Van’s pharmacy assistance program that allows uninsured patients to qualify for medications at no cost. As any doctor will tell you, managing high blood pressure and diabetes well can help avoid debilitating consequences down the road.

The Care-A-Van’s services will be improving soon. A new, larger van expected to be put into service this winter will have more refrigerator space to store patient immunizations, just in time for flu season.

Also potentially coming soon will be the ability to write prescriptions and dispense medications right on the van, rather than waiting to receive them from pharmacies and deliver them to patients. The Care-A-Van has applied for the pharmacy distribution license from the Virginia Board of Pharmacy.

The health care professionals who work on this van, as well as Bon Secours, deserve applause for their work on behalf of the underserved in our community. No matter what happens with health care on the federal level, services like this will always be needed.