Interstate Health has taken its first strides towards giving truck drivers and travelers access to necessary healthcare with the groundbreaking of their first clinic on Friday. Located at Port Fuel Center in Port Wentworth, Georgia, this ambitious project was made possible through a successful round of pre-seed funding from industry investors four months ago.
“When health care systems are investing in resources, they tend to build a network for the 80%, not the 2% who are on the road all of the time,” said Jeff Seraphine, CEO of Brentwood, Tennessee-headquartered Interstate Health, in a recent interview with FreightWaves.
Seraphine detailed a troubling trend among drivers today: limited access to emergency health care and services, potentially leading to dangerous consequences if left untreated.
“Truck drivers on the road today only have so many options. They can pull over and get an Uber to a clinic, although you won’t find an Uber in most rural towns. They can go to an expensive emergency room or put it off until the load is complete [but] health care delays can lead to worse outcomes,” said Seraphine.
Interstate Health also announced the expansion of their coverage area and executive team with the acquisition of Occupational Health Center in Cookeville, Tennessee. Dr Toney Hudson is welcomed to the fold as Chief Medical Officer while bringing the upper Cumberland region under their growing umbrella of services.
“The vision of Interstate Health is the fulfillment of what my team and I have wanted for the drivers we have taken care of for many years. We are excited to help make that vision a reality by bringing our organizations together,” said Hudson in a news release.
Interstate Health is innovating their health care network to make it easier for drivers on the road. With plans underway to integrate services into fleet technologies, soon drivers will have access to Intestate’s facilities with available appointments and parking directly along their routes.
While the initial goal of the founding team and investors is to build a health care system catered to commercial truck drivers, Seraphine expounded on an overall vision to build a network of health care facilities that’s accessible for rural community members and travelers along interstate highways. This is a crucial point for the business model to function as it will be necessary to broaden the customer base.
“The combination of truck driver and traveler patient needs opens up our patient population to make this model work,” said Seraphine. “When we can do that, we can afford to put more clinics where truck drivers need them and build out our vision of accessible health care along the interstate.”
The larger population of patients will pave the way for future offerings such as pharmacy services and technology like virtual visits, allowing people to access medical care from virtually anywhere.
For the time being, Interstate Health is actively focusing on creating a comprehensive clinic network, with plans in place to develop new clinics or acquire existing ones every 4-6 weeks. Once they reach 30-40 locations nationwide, the company will be able to offer virtual and pharmacy services across their network.
“It’s really important to make sure those clinics are working, and we are getting positive feedback from patients,” Seraphine explained. “As we see the clinics operating as they were intended to do, we will begin to scale the company even faster.”
Source: FreightWaves
