Most health systems planning mobile lung screening think in terms of one unit. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences thought in terms of a state.
UAMS is Arkansas' only health sciences university, and its Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute is the state's only academic cancer center. That singular position comes with a singular problem: Arkansas ranks near the bottom nationally in health outcomes and access to care, and the gap is widest exactly where the roads get longest — the rural south and the Delta. For lung cancer, where early detection is the whole ballgame, geography was functioning as a diagnosis.
A single mobile unit can make a dent in a region. It cannot cover a state. So UAMS didn't build one coach. They built a fleet.
The Fleet Decision
We had the honor of partnering on the UAMS build program, and the fleet approach shaped every decision from day one.
One coach serving one metro can be designed around a single routine: same roads, same sites, familiar rhythm. A statewide fleet has to assume the opposite. Each coach needed to operate independently for days at a time, far from the main campus in Little Rock — which drove decisions about self-sufficiency, power, connectivity for image transmission back to UAMS radiologists, and serviceability on the road.
Standardization was the other fleet-level decision. Three coaches built to a common platform mean technologists can rotate between units without retraining, supplies and parts interchange, and the patient experience is identical whether the coach is parked in the Delta or the Ozarks. For a program that lives or dies on operational simplicity, sameness is a feature.
The Deployment Model
The fleet runs through the UAMS Institute for Community Health Innovation, which deploys mobile health units across Arkansas wherever care is most needed — publishing upcoming stops so communities know when screening is coming to them.
That's the model worth copying: the coaches don't wait for patients to find them. They work a published circuit of community events, regional campuses, and partner sites across the state, and the lung screening fleet slots into an infrastructure UAMS had already proven with programs like its MammoVan. Mobile mammography taught the institution how to route, staff, schedule, and follow up on mobile screening. Lung screening inherited a playbook, not a blank page.
How It Was Funded
The fleet was supported through state legislative funding for mobile health units — public dollars, publicly committed, because lawmakers could see exactly what they were buying: screening capacity that reaches every corner of the state rather than a single building in one city.
That funding story has become the rule, not the exception. Nearly every mobile lung screening program we've delivered in the past two years — UAMS, and the programs we'll profile next in this series — was funded substantially through grants, appropriations, or public health dollars. Mobile units are fundable in a way new construction simply isn't right now. (For the current $50 billion federal window, see our Rural Health Transformation Program funding guide.)
What Other Systems Can Copy
Design for the mission radius, not the parking lot. If your coaches will run multi-day circuits, self-sufficiency and remote image transmission aren't upgrades — they're the spec.
Standardize across units. If a fleet is even a future possibility, build unit one as the template. Interchangeable staffing, supplies, and workflow are what make unit two and three cheap to operate.
Borrow your own playbook. If your system already runs any mobile program — mammography, primary care, outreach — your lung screening program should inherit its routing, navigation, and community relationships.
Let the mission write the funding application. "Statewide access" is an argument legislators and grantmakers can fund. UAMS proved it.
Bringing Screening Closer to Home
Three coaches. One state. One mission: making sure a lung screening in rural Arkansas requires a short drive to a community event, not a day trip to Little Rock.
This Lung Cancer Awareness Month, we're profiling the programs bringing screening closer to home. Next up: a 45-foot coach built to serve 21 counties in East Tennessee.
Exploring a mobile lung screening program — single coach or fleet? Explore our lung screening programs → or talk to our team →
