The CareStation Charade: Healthcare for the Homeless, In a Box

Image from the OnMed CareStation website.

In a world where genuine compassion is increasingly replaced by technological band-aids, Washoe County has unveiled its latest "solution" to human suffering: a box with a screen.

Anthem, Inc. has magnanimously bestowed $400,000 for a gleaming CareStation—a sterile, standalone unit promising "hybrid medical care"—at the 9th Street Senior Center. How very innovative, yet misguided.

Washoe County notes regarding the CareStation.

Let's pause to appreciate the cruel irony here. Two senior centers in our county that have daily senior activities and lunch—Cold Springs (Cold Springs Community Center), and Sun Valley (Sun Valley Center)— sit miles from the nearest medical facility. Seniors in these communities face journeys through traffic and weather when medical needs arise. Their plights, apparently, aren't quite photogenic enough for county leadership.

Meanwhile, the 9th Street Center, a mere five-minute shadow from Renown Hospital, receives this technological marvel. Why? A heartbroken county employee (who risked their position to contact us) revealed the cynical calculus: County Manager Eric Brown directed the CareStation to this location to help reduce medical calls at the Nevada CARES Campus.

In other words, this isn't about seniors at all—it's about the homeless. It's about keeping them contained, processed, and out of the "real" healthcare system. It's about optics. After all the 9th Street Senior Center is all but a second CARES Campus for the over 60-crowd.

"My elderly parents in Cold Springs have to drive 45 minutes for basic medical care," our whistleblower lamented. "We have no physicians in North Valleys and this health care kiosk might have really made a difference to some financially strapped seniors.”

One can't help but remember a local businessman who pioneered similar telehealth kiosks through Computerized Screening, Inc. back in 2016. His technology traveled the globe while being ignored in his own backyard. That was before a corporation dangled a six-figure "award" before our county officials' eyes, and before County Manager Brown’s arrival - you know, the telehealth guy from California.

The message is devastatingly clear: Washoe County doesn't value its seniors equally. Those with addresses in the wrong zip codes must continue their pilgrimages for healthcare, while resources cluster where they make bureaucratic lives easier, not human lives better.

A CareStation might provide basic services, but let's not pretend it's about compassion. It's about management—of people, of resources, of inconvenient realities. It's about hiding our community's wounds behind a touchscreen.

The seniors of Cold Springs and Sun Valley deserve better than to be reminded, yet again, that in Washoe County, some elders matter more than others. Or rather, some problems are simply more worth hiding.

The CareStation is suppose to show up at the 9th Street Senior Center sometime in May 2025 after the grand reopening.