Becker's Hospital Review

30 30 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP any children who need immediate access to healthcare, we have that clinic on-site at Grand Ledge High School. We have three critical access hospitals in Eaton, Ionia and Clinton, and these are really critical to communities they serve. ose are 25-bed hospitals but also have full outpatient services for the community. We're trying to deploy our specialists out to those community areas. Specialists like interventional radiologists, our pulmonary team, our ENT and dermatology team. Some of those are going to be rolling out this fall, and some are already in place. We have a mobile health clinic, and we have ramped that up over the last year. at mobile clinic is moving four to five days a week now and going to multiple areas within the state where we know there is a need for access to patients. at clinic is staffed by a physician assistant and a medical assistant and is providing healthcare to the communities it's moving to. We're trying to reach out to the community directly so we can provide that service to them in their home community. We're working on a food bank. Eaton Community Health partnered with University of Michigan Health-Sparrow Eaton Hospital. We're in the process of setting that up right now at the hospital. Our home care team here is open to underinsured as well as Medicare, Medicaid and all other insurances. So we really are filling the gap for the community with regard to Medicaid and underinsured for home care services. We are one of the few in Lansing and the greater area to provide home care services for those who need it. We do in-home care as well as virtual. Also, we're serving the Carson City community. at is the kind of rural area sometimes lacking in health care resources and accessibility. We're adding services to that area as well specialists and other services people might be trying to access from very far away. e communities have responded very positively to the changes we're making, and they are accessing those services. ey're happy, and we're trying to allow people to get care close to home, and only come to the larger hospitals when they need to, so we can get that access to care out in the community. Kirsten Riggs, BSN, RN. Interim president of UNC Health Rex (Raleigh, N.C.): We have worked hard with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to enroll patients who are newly eligible for Medicaid. We created a campaign and will have one of the first enrollment events on May 18 in our Smithfield area, which is in Johnston County. It's a county within our system service area that UNC Rex supports through outreach. e hope is that we'll drive eligible patients in, help them apply for Medicaid, and then follow the process. We believe that will have a positive impact in the community by helping patients navigate an important, but complicated process. e other thing we're expanding is using mobile clinics to improve care and certain services in the rural parts of our state, or where we know there's a healthcare desert. One example is our mobile mammography. We travel to employers, churches and public health clinics to provide those important screening services to women, and then introduce them to other options while they're there if they're in need of other services. We also do that for heart and vascular screenings for peripheral vascular disease and have a standing support circuit at one of our Federally Qualified Health Centers. is organization treats patients who aren't eligible or haven't traditionally been eligible for Medicaid. Now with the Medicaid expansion, we're partnering with them to figure out how best to support their ability to navigate their patient population. One thing that's exciting that's coming up is a new hearing and speech mobile clinic for children. at will increase access to important hearing and speech care for children across our state, especially in underserved rural areas that lack appropriate resources. Additionally, we just had a ribbon cutting at our new Beacon Point clinic in southeast Raleigh. It's one of the poorer areas within the county, and there is a lot less access to primary care, specialty care, pediatric care and more. We're partnering with Advance Community Health, one of those FQHCs, to co-locate primary and specialty care in adjacent clinics. Our specialty services include gastroenterology, heart and vascular and sickle cell services. Part of what we're doing in that space is they kicked off their obstetrics platform, and we'll be the group that delivers for them. Patients will come to our hospital for delivery and immediate postpartum care. en the hope, in partnership with this FQHC, is that the patients who are supported can return to their primary care and we will ensure that the child and the mother are cared for quickly. Previously, it was challenging for new moms to navigate those resources. We're hopeful it will be a model for the future. At UNC Rex, we've also partnered with Food Lion to open a food pantry in the hospital. e patient or their family gets a prescription, and based on the diet or the needs they have, we will make sure they go home with food to help them continue to heal. at's been successful in helping patients before they are discharged from the hospital. One other example is having social workers in our emergency department provide support and access to patients who don't have primary care, or are uninsured. It's a great way to ensure they get follow-up visits before they leave the hospital. en post-discharge, those social workers follow up and partner in hopes of helping that patient get care necessary to keep them out of the hospital. We're trying to better understand if we can get them tied in, have all the resources, make it easy for the patient, then maybe they won't use the ED as much as they have in the past. From a mission perspective, we're driven to provide care to everyone, and this is a great way to do it. n "All of this important work is foundational to our mission to serve the health needs of our entire community and our long-term vision of getting healthcare right by delivering the right care in the right way in the right place at the right cost to produce the right and equitable health outcomes, always." — Mark Clement, president and CEO of TriHealth

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