Mobile Clinic Manufacturer Receives National Healthcare Award from Health Industry Leaders
Healthcare Leadership Council Honors TESCO Specialty Vehicles with the Redefining American Healthcare Award
TOLEDO, OH – The Healthcare Leadership Council (HLC) honored TESCO Specialty Vehicles with its Redefining American Healthcare Award at a ceremony in Toledo on Wednesday, June 28th.
TESCO Specialty Vehicles is a subsidiary of TESCO Bus, leveraging the extensive experience and expertise of its parent company. TESCO, a family-owned business, is one of the country’s largest and most successful bus distributors. TESCO Specialty Vehicles provides customers specialized vehicles at industry leading speed that improve equitable access to services in all types of communities. These include mobile medical clinics, dental clinics, command centers, libraries, and testing or blood draw clinics.
“It is very gratifying to know that our mobile clinics are utilized nationally to provide quality healthcare services in urban and rural communities to care for our veterans,” said Bud Graham, president of TESCO, while accepting the award on behalf of his organization. He went on to acknowledge his son, Brent Graham, who leads the specialty vehicles division and also his father, Noel Graham Sr., who is the founder and CEO of TESCO. “We are immensely proud to be recognized for the work we do to supply quality mobile clinics to our customers.”
“We are recognizing TESCO Specialty Vehicles today because of its production of mobile medical units that reach at-risk patient populations and meet them where they live,” Debbie Witchy, Healthcare Leadership Council’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, told the audience. “These buses have the capability built in for audiology, dental, ophthalmology, neurology, general medicine and psychiatry. Access is not a unique dilemma to one part of this country, and the benefits of this product can be shared with many others across America to increase accessibility to essential health services.”
Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur attended the ceremony, expressing gratitude to the organization for thinking about how to better deliver healthcare in this country and bringing the delivery of care to the 21st century. She stated, “You are creating the future of healthcare for us. Thank you for moving this region and America forward.”
“We were looking all over the country for people to build mobile medical clinics that would meet the demand, and it was this team that could build new capabilities and deliver it faster to the market than anybody else in the country,” said Brendon Gehrke of Leidos. “Since 2018, Leidos subsidiary QTC has driven these mobile medical units over 500,000 miles across the country that patients would have had to travel themselves. We have partnered with Native American tribes in Washington and Montana to provide medical disability exam services to tribal veterans on reservations for the first time in their tribes history.”
Paul Matherny, of Ohio State University, spoke of the HEALing Communities Study, which aims to reduce opioid overdose deaths by connecting with local organizations in four different states. “Multiple counties decided to utilize mobile medical units to maximize their reach with overdose education, free naloxone and medication for opioid use disorder. TESCO was able to customize units and deliver them quickly in order to help county agencies to achieve their goals,” he shared.
Senator Sherrod Brown sent a video message for the event, stating, “For too long accessing essential healthcare services has not been easy. TESCO’s mobile health units are serving at-risk Ohioans, serving rural communities, serving veterans throughout our state and are a pillar in the local economy.”
Representative Bob Latta also provided recorded remarks, congratulating TESCO for this honor, saying, “We all know, especially during covid, how essential these units were, and will be in the future. They can serve people in rural areas, and those who are home bound and do not have transportation.”
The Healthcare Leadership Council created the Redefining American Healthcare Award to recognize best practices and programs in communities and organizations across the nation that optimize care for vulnerable patients. Award recipients are organizations developing and activating cost-effective, measurable community programs promoting a patient-centered approach to care that considers outside social factors to achieve the best outcomes.
The recording of this event is available here: https://vimeo.com/840603682/c3eb7a47f7?share=copy
For Immediate Release: June 29, 2023
Contact: Kelly Fernandez, (202) 449-3452
