Featuring President + Co-Founder, Lois Irwin
I first learned about the power of mobile medical services as an undergraduate student at Cornell University volunteering at a hospital in Liberia. Citizens of this very poor West African country suffered from severe malnutrition and an infant mortality rate of over 50%. Most people lived with a low-grade infection of malaria since medications to prevent this disease were unaffordable.
Access to medical care was a huge problem. In the mountainous region of Zorzor where I was based, there were no paved roads or public transportation. People were accustomed to seeking care from witch doctors.
But a remarkable doctor named Paul Mertens, who is still working in Liberia, envisioned innovative ways to improve health outcomes and modernize care delivery. He was dedicated to reaching the remote villages with a mobile clinic that supplemented ancient practices. Paul admired the local witch doctors’ unique medical practices, such as setting broken bones without the advantage of an X-ray machine. From his perspective, it was best to collaborate with those doctors rather than to compete with them.
I was assigned, along with four Liberian nurses, to travel every day in a Volkswagen bus to provide free immunizations and medical care for the people who lived in the remote mountainous villages beyond walking-distance from the hospital. The goal was to improve the overall health of the children at the clinic while measuring and decreasing the infant mortality rate. Villagers didn’t have traditional calendars to remind them of appointments. Instead, they tied their schedules to the farming seasons. The families were astounded and grateful for the access to these critical services, and I could see the positive impact on their lives by removing the barriers to care - distance and cost. They no longer had to walk miles to receive care from a bricks-and-mortar clinic.
That experience made a major impression on a young person like me who was passionate about doing my part to help save the world, as others were in my generation. Based on my experience, I was inspired to start EZaccessMD years later to provide working Americans with easy and convenient access to quality healthcare that eliminates travel and recovery time. Just like my time in Africa, the goal today is to bring care directly to the patient.
About 180 million Americans are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance, which is the reason EZaccessMD works with employers who offer health insurance. With the touch of a button, the patients we serve have access to a wide range of professionally delivered healthcare services that include X-rays, ultrasounds, strep and flu tests, and much more.
From my time as a young volunteer in Liberia to the present day, my mission remains the same: make medical care as accessible as possible in order to improve the overall health of patients.
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