Ronald Roderick of Skowhegan pushed his wheelchair-bound wife up the ramp at the Bingham Area Health Center and carefully maneuvered the wheelchair through its entrance.

Pausing long enough for staff members and other patients to relocate some chairs to allow the wheelchair into the waiting area, Roderick moved his wife Lorna to a spot where she would not clog the tiny reception room.

The middle-aged woman, who took the activity in stride, patiently waited for her turn with Dr. Cynthia Robertson, the center’s physician.

When that time arrived a short while later, Ronald Roderick stood and, without pausing, wheeled his wife into a bathroom a few feet away, the only room in the building that is big enough to accommodate her wheelchair.

Robertson walked in behind the couple and closed the door. Taking a seat on the end of the closed toilet, the doctor greeted the couple and quizzed Lorna Roderick about her symptoms.

“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked, her eyes peering at Roderick over glasses perched on her nose.

Roderick proceeded to tell the physician about her symptoms, not the least bit upset that her surroundings included a bathroom sink, a toilet and a basket of condoms. She, like other patients at this facility located on busy Route 201 between Skowhegan and Jackman, have overlooked the deficiencies in the building because of the quality health care they have received for 25 years.

But a group of supporters believe that services can be improved and health care can become more convenient if a larger facility that includes a dental clinic were constructed to serve the health center.

Toward that end, the Bingham Area Health Council has undertaken an aggressive fund-raising campaign to raise $700,000 to build such a facility about a half-mile south from the clinic in the “old railroad yard.”

“They’re just really overcrowded,” Martha Garrett-Young of Wellington, a member of the Bingham Area Health Council, said recently. She said she hoped ground for the new building could be broken in the fall or early spring.

Even area students have thrown their support to the project. Basketball teams from both Valley High in Bingham and Piscataquis Community High School in Guilford have donated proceeds from games to the fund drive. In addition, the Charles A. Dean Trust Fund has donated $25,000 to the project.

Those involved in rural health care are known for their resourcefulness, so when space is a premium they adjust, even if it means using a bathroom as an office, Garrett-Young said.

The staff at the Bingham Area Health Center, which draws patients from as far away as Wellington in Piscataquis County to Waterville, doubles up on duties, and their space invades one another’s as they serve as many as 600 patients a month. Last year, the center had 6,807 patient visits.

“Like the building, we all serve many purposes,” said Robertson.

The medical facility, located in what formerly was a private house, is so cramped that a facsimile machine is in the doorway of the front office and a copy machine serves as a desk. The 6-foot-wide hallway to the two examination rooms and laboratory doubles as a patient weigh station, kitchen, nurses’ station and library.

“We just adapt and improvise what we’ve got here,” Carolsue Hill, practice manager, said.

Even Robertson and William Bookheim, a physician’s assistant who also serves the clinic, share an office on the second floor of the building with other agencies, such as the local domestic violence project and substance abuse prevention.

The reception room is so small that patients sometimes wait on a stairwell to the second floor to be seen. At busy times, patients have been known to wait more than an hour to see a provider, say staffers. Nor is there enough parking for the facility.

As Robertson and her staff dart into doorways or flatten their backs up against walls to avoid colliding while making their rounds, “excuse me” is the phrase most often exchanged.

Even with the tight quarters, the 11 staff members, most of whom have been long employed at the center, get along remarkably well. “It’s a very close-knit staff; we’ve all worked together for so long,” Hill said.

Robertson, formerly of upstate New York, fulfilled a college loan obligation by serving rural Maine in Bingham, but she decided she liked the region so much that she has stayed for 17 years. The physician initially taught high school English before changing careers to follow in her father’s footsteps.

Her father, William Robertson, had a medical practice under her bedroom. When she inherited his medical office equipment, Robertson shipped it to Bingham where it functionally serves the clientele in the small exam rooms.

Today Robertson believes she follows her father’s example by providing modern medicine the old-fashioned way.

Dressed in a flannel shirt over a turtleneck sweater and slacks, the doctor said she still makes house calls and, up until two years ago, she delivered babies and made rounds at the local hospital. The salt-and pepper-haired woman enjoys teaching at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor in her spare time.

“If you can’t be of service to other people, what is life for?” she said. “I guess I didn’t go into medicine for money. I wanted to provide services to people who needed them.”

While she said patients currently receive the best medical care available, Robertson said a new facility could do so much more for health care in the region.

“We’d like to have more docs and PAs [physician assistants] provide more comprehensive services and shorten the wait [of patients in the office practice],” she said. The region also needs a dental clinic and mental health services.

“The medicine we practice is really good medicine because we’re thinking about all angles of their care,” Robertson said. “We try to take care of whole families – it’s not just a doc in a box.”

Like the Rodericks, Charles Paddock of Pleasant Pond in Carratunk, waiting patiently in the crowded reception room for his turn with the doctor, also recognizes the need for a larger facility.

“It’s important to the community,” he said. The industrial arts teacher at Valley High School said a larger clinic would provide a bit more medicine to help care for the community and would provide shorter waits for office visits.

But he hoped the old-fashioned way of service would continue.

“It’s like having a house visit,” he said. “It feels like that when you come in here.”