Mobile mammography trailers are utilized to make screening tests more accessible to women who live in places where health care facilities are not readily available. The quality of examinations carried out in mobile mammography trailers is identical to those services done in a stationary facility.

Mammography trailers are the most effective way to increase breast screening participation by engaging women who do not have access to fixed systems in their area. Mammography units help to lower failure to comply rates and, as a result, enhance cancer screening efficiency by providing a comfortable interior design and ease of access.

If you’re thinking about investing in a mobile mammography trailer, contact us here or give us a call to get a customized quote. We have experience manufacturing mobile medical vehicles of all types based on your needs.

The Advantages of Mobile Mammography

Though mobile mammography units provide the same services and benefits as fixed mammography clinics, they go a lot farther in terms of patient servicing. Let us now look at some advantages mobile mammography units provide from market reach to cost effectiveness.

Creates New Opportunities For Growth

The prospect of service factories, community centers, schools, and office buildings is provided by mobile mammography as part of an employer or community cooperation. Engaging various segments of the population can create alternate growth prospects for the healthcare delivery system with the right marketing.

Whenever a hospital or other primary health care services establishes partnerships with community companies and organizations, it can ensure a market by establishing itself as an important public service. Furthermore, because the provider is actually mobile, he or she has complete control over the schedule, allowing for the most efficient patient assessments throughout the month.

Increased Market Awareness

The use of mobile breast cancer screening machines expands a healthcare system’s market and boosts contracted screenings. This enables the owner-operator institution to reach out to patients it might not somehow be able to contact. Practitioners can effectively reach their community while also developing a new cash source by delivering regularly scheduled screenings in rural and urban regions.

According to studies, if access to screening is made simpler and more reasonable, even women in metropolitan areas are more likely to have one. Offering a mobile mammography machine that comes to the workplace can help market and organize a mobile screening vehicle with employers through worksite intervention initiatives.

Increases Profitability in a Cost-Effective Way

Whenever a woman has a good screening, she will proceed to her screening facility (the owner-operator of the mobile mammography unit or the hospital) for the continued oncology services she requires in more than 80% of the cases. According to a research report in 2011, the total average healthcare cost for women with metastatic breast cancer that are undergoing chemotherapy as their treatment method is more than $140,000 (inflation adjusted) with an average follow-up of 532 days. Given that a mobile unit can perform 4,000 patient tests every year, and that 80% of those who screened positive would receive treatment with the same hospital, the institution has created a new patient referral source.

Taking Steps To Remove Roadblocks To Breast Cancer Screenings Saves Lives

Most of the barriers to breast cancer screenings that medically underserved women confront are removed with mobile mammography services. Patients, the community, and medical providers all benefit from a mobile breast cancer screening program. Given sufficient due diligence in developing the market, the service is ideally lucrative for healthcare practitioners and, more significantly, saves lives by detecting illnesses early.

Safeguards The Market

Mobile medical providers deliver specialized, high-impact, and inexpensive health care that adapts dynamically to the changing needs of their communities by working directly with them and exploiting existing community assets. Such mobile health units provide actual benefits to their organizations by increasing exposure, awareness, and brand recognition as they travel across the communities. A well-branded mobile unit functions as a moving advertisement for a healthcare provider.

How Much Does A Mobile Mammography Trailer Cost?

Mobile mammography is thought to provide the same advantages as mammography at a fixed location. Most forms of mammography screening programs examine women without symptoms at periodic intervals with the aim of discovering malignancies sooner, when they become easier to cure, and hence lowering therapy expenses. The ability to recruit a large number of women for screening and the ability to execute the service in a cost-effective manner are both important factors in determining the effectiveness of a mobile mammography program.

Mobile mammography services have associated fees, including insurance, management, overtime, promotion, instructional offerings, and travel and liability insurance, which are not included in fixed-site programs. As a result, it’s critical to do a cost-based analysis to determine the exact costs of the operation. To assure resource cost coverage, this type of research should result in a clear understanding of the minimal cost per procedure. Although Medicare reimbursement for technical and professional expenditures is available online via Trailblazer (the official source for Medicare information), it does not cover total operating costs. According to the findings of a national survey conducted in the United States, only 47 percent of mobile facilities were profitable or broke even, while 52 percent reported minor or significant losses.

There’s not much information on the cost you can get around online, however, some estimates peg the cost at around $539,052 for a mobile film unit, $456,392 for a mobile digital unit, and $435,162 for a stationary unit.

What Equipment Can You Install On A Cancer Screening Trailer?

Every mobile mammography unit typically has the same equipment that a fixed mammography clinic has. Of course, these mammography units should have state-of-art equipment which could better handle cancer screening services for early detection of possible breast cancer.

Some of the major imaging brands which offer state-of-the-art technological advances for this equipment include Hitachi, GE, Siemens, Philips, Hologic, Esaote, Toshiba, Fuji, among a host of other imaging brands.

Some of the equipment that you can install in a cancer screening trailer include:

  • Infrared Thermography. It’s a device that combines an infrared camera and a 3.5-inch remote controller to allow doctors to examine patients through their skin. The infrared probe can regulate the zoom in and out of photos immediately. It has an optical zoom-in of 20 times, automatic focusing, and innovative filtering technology, so it doesn’t need to be used in a dark room.
  • Full-Field Digital Mammography Unit. Since everything essential for picture acquisition is already incorporated in its chassis, this equipment is the ideal “all in one” solution for small diagnostic centers or screening operations on mobile units. This makes digital mammography easier and more accessible to everyone.

Each part of the X-ray examination and every feature of the mammography machine has been thoroughly examined, with modifications made to improve patient convenience and examination efficiency, as well as to achieve even higher detection ability and functional efficiency standards than before.

  • Analog Mammography Unit. This unit could produce the same results in almost equal parts regardless of the image acquisition technology thanks to the use of the newest technological solutions and linking the same components, like the state-of-the-art automatic exposure regulation that optimizes the exposure parameters and reduces the dose to be supplied to a minimum, or the 2 large control touch-screen displays that enable the operator to handle all the operations and observe the parameters in a single screen.

Each unit can be fitted with a bucky for 18 x 24cm and 24 x 30cm cassettes, or a cassette receptacle built to accommodate and detect both formats, to save setup time and improve productivity.

  • Digital Breast Tomosynthesis Mammography Unit (DBT). This device is one of the most modern mammography systems due to its excellent image quality and high performance. This device could be used for 3D imaging, 2D screening, diagnostic tests, and stereotactic biopsies, among other applications. A digital breast tomosynthesis mammography unit is a full mammography system that includes all mammography functions.

In mammography, ensuring the highest possible image quality at the lowest possible patient dose is a daily challenge. This digital breast tomosynthesis device produces excellent image quality and adapts image processing to the preferences of the radiologist. Image post-processing can also be customized to meet the demands of each unique user.

What Kind Of Services Can You Offer?

Check-ups, mammography, and other forms of screening methods are all possible ways to detect breast cancer before symptoms appear. Periodic breast examination can aid in the early detection of breast cancer when it is most curable.

Fairly, most services you can avail of from a fixed mammography clinic can also be offered in a mobile mammography/cancer screening trailer. The advantage of having a mobile mammography unit, as stated earlier, can access the underserved members of the community who either don’t have means of going to a mammography clinic or are far away from one. The following services can be offered from a mobile mammography/cancer screening trailer.

1. Breast Tomosynthesis (3-D Mammography)

In contrast to the present norm of 2-D mammography, 3-D mammography allows the breast to be examined in 1-millimeter, 3-D “slices.” This new technique improves mam­mogram specificity and sensitivity, and it has been demonstrated in tests to improve cancer diagnosis.

2. Breast Ultrasound

Sound waves are used to make images of the breast tissue in breast ultrasound (or ultrasonography). A probe is inserted into the skin of the breast during a breast ultrasound. High-frequency sound waves are sent into the breast by the probe, bounce off the tissue, and return to it as echo waves. The visuals seen on the ultrasound machine’s screen are created by converting the echo waves.

Ultrasound is frequently used to evaluate abnormalities discovered by mammography or a clinical breast exam. The skills and training of the technician conducting the method have a large impact on its accuracy.

3. Breast MRI

Breast MRI uses radio waves and a strong magnet coupled to a computer to make detailed photos of the breast when it’s used to check for breast cancer.

Fluids are injected into the breast during an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) test to enhance the visibility of the inside of the breast.

Regular mammography combined with a breast MRI has been shown in studies to provide certain benefits over other screening modalities for women who are at elevated risk for breast cancer. It is not, however, usually suggested for women who are at intermediate risk of developing breast cancer.

4. Contrast-Enhanced Digital Mammography (CEDM)

CEDM stands for contrast-enhanced digital mammography, which combines digital mammography with the injection of a specific dye known as a contrast agent. On mammography, tumors absorb more contrast agents than healthy tissue, making it simpler for doctors to spot tumors.
CEDM is a recent development, and breast cancer specialists are actively researching which patients it should be used for on a regular basis. It could, for example, play a role in breast cancer screening in women who are at higher-than-average risk or have thick breasts.

5. Clinical Breast Examination

A clinical breast exam is a medical examination of the breast carried out by a qualified healthcare expert. This entails a check of both breasts, the underarms, and the area around the collarbone with any signs of breast cancer.

Despite the fact that the death rate from breast cancer has decreased, the mortality rate in women from medically deprived populations remains unacceptably high. Regardless of the fact that screening mammography is perhaps the most reliable way of detecting breast cancer at an early stage, many women in medically underserved areas do not have enough access to it. Mobile mammography could be able to close this gap by providing free or low-cost screening mammograms and delivering services to women in their own communities, thus removing cost and transit constraints.