In five remote Chugach villages, health aides work without an X-ray, and new funding aims to change that

In the village clinics of Chenega Bay, Nanwalek, Port Graham and Tatitlek — tiny Alutiiq communities in Prince William Sound and lower Cook Inlet, none of them on a road — a health aide is often the first and only medical provider a patient sees. When someone comes in with a possible broken bone or a badly infected tooth, that aide, working by phone or video with a provider in Seward or Anchorage, has to size it up largely by hand and eye. At these clinics, diagnostic imaging is limited or simply unavailable.

The tribal health organization Chugachmiut is moving to change that. This week it issued requests for proposals to put diagnostic imaging equipment into five of its clinics — the four remote villages plus its regional hub in Seward — so that providers and health aides no longer have to make those calls without a picture of what's going on inside a patient.

The equipment sought is a mix of medical and dental imaging. One solicitation covers mobile digital X-ray systems and secure image transmission at all five clinics — Seward, Chenega Bay, Nanwalek, Port Graham and Tatitlek. A second covers dental scanning and 3D-printing equipment at the same clinics except Port Graham. A third would place a cone beam CT scanner — a three-dimensional dental X-ray — in Seward. Each package includes shipping, installation, staff training, and ongoing warranty and maintenance, so the gear is not just delivered but kept running in places where a service call is a flight away.

The money comes through the Alaska Rural Health Transformation Program. The solicitations don't state a value, but the state Department of Health has listed Chugachmiut for $627,200 toward portable digital X-ray at five rural clinics. Vendor questions are due by the end of August, and proposals by Sept. 17. The account here comes from the solicitations Chugachmiut posted; the organization does not otherwise comment in them.