By Michael Bennett
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Ridgetown Independent News
A ribbon cutting and official opening ceremony were recently held for a modular Community Care Nursing Clinic located in a trailer in the Bothwell Arena parking lot.
CarePartners, which runs the facility with Erie St. Clair Home Community Care Support Services, opened the clinic in April.
The opening ceremony was delayed until Sept. 19 after a ramp was installed to make the trailer fully accessible.
The 55-foot trailer has a fully accessible washroom, a self-contained water system, and a full-sized treatment room.
The facility is not an emergency, drop-in clinic or a primary-care provider.
The clinic, funded through Home & Community Care, provides nursing care on a referral basis for residents in rural areas eligible for home community care support services. Patients are referred to the clinic through Home & Community Care, as well as physicians and area hospitals.
“If you have any kind of nursing needs, Home & Community Care would send us a referral, and we would book an appointment for you to see a nurse at the clinic,” said Amanda de Man, CarePartners director of patient care and operations.
CarePartner is a home care service provider in Chatham-Kent, Windsor-Essex and Sarnia-Lambton that gets referrals from Home & Community Care and is now linked with the Chatham-Kent Health Team, all with the common goal of supporting the provincial government’s comprehensive plan to improve access to the right care in the right place in rural communities.
CarePartner, which has 24 clinics across the province, opened a clinic in Petrolia in 2022. The Bothwell facility is CareParrner’s first mobile clinic.
“This is the first of its kind, and we hope to expand this across the province,” da Man said.
She said there is already a nursing clinic in Chatham as Home & Community Care was looking for an area in the rural community that would be the best site for a rural clinic.
“There are certain eligibility requirements that factor in, the ability to pull people from all directions without creating a large drive time,” da Man said. “So Bothwell was the location chosen by Home & Community Care.”
However, a suitable site could not be found in the Bothwell area.
“We had to think outside the box at different options; that’s where the modular idea came from,” de Man said.
CarePartner and the Municipality of Chatham-Kent reached a four-year lease agreement to set up the trailer in the Bothwell Arena parking lot.
East Kent Coun. Steve Pinsonneault told the media he hopes to see more mobile clinics to improve health-care service in Chatham-Kent.
“This could be the start of a very, very good thing; we’re really fortunate to have this in our community,” Pinsonneault said.
The clinic is open 8 a.m.-4 p.m., seven days a week, and is flexible for extended hours if necessary. It is serviced by one full-time and one part-time nurse who alternate shifts.
While the clinic is referral-based, residents can also self-refer by calling Home & Community Care Support Services at 519-337-1000, as an automated service will talk callers through the process.
