Blog Archives
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Memorial Mobile Health Center
Memorial Healthcare System has been a leader in mobile health since 2000. The mobile health program runs both pediatric and adult health vans, all with the goal of increasing access to care and intervention services for community members.
The mobile vans operate 21 days a month and offer free services and social needs screenings to community members, most of whom are under- or uninsured. The pediatric van offers immunizations, behavioral health services, well and sick visits, follow-up visits, and counseling events. The adult van also offers vaccines and sick visits but emphasizes helping patients apply for public assistance benefits, such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, if they are eligible. All vans are equipped with Memorial Healthcare staff, including two medical assistants, a nurse practitioner, and occasional residents.
To ensure the program meets patients’ needs, Memorial partners with many community organizations, including early learning services, homeless services, migrant services, food pantries, local universities, and local government to help identify locations to set up the clinics.
Memorial’s Mobile Health Center has built a trustful relationship with the community through its efforts. By caring for patients in the community, the vans also have reduced the burden on local emergency departments. The pediatric mobile van sees about 220 patients per month, and the adult mobile van sees about 490 patients per month.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Mobile Wellness Clinic
The Casey Foundation, an organization that works to improve the well-being of children, youth, and families in the United States, conducted an analysis of the Opelika community in 2017 that revealed areas with a lack of access to care. The foundation engaged the City of Opelika and East Alabama Health to begin a mobile medicine program to increase access to primary care within the community. First Transit donated the mobile bus in 2017, and the program officially launched in December 2022.
The mobile wellness clinic visits communities in the greater Opelika area once a week. Staff provide disease prevention resources and screen patients for chronic conditions at the designated site each week. mobile unit social worker connects patients to resources within the community through screening for social determinants of health. The clinic is funded through multiple sources, including the Casey Foundation and the local housing authority, which allows the clinic to prioritize communities with the most need.
Beyond the City of Opelika and the Casey Foundation, mobile wellness clinic partners include charitable clinics that allow referrals for patients to be seen more quickly, local schools and universities from which students work and learn in the bus , and other local community-based organizations that help the program build trust with community members.
The mobile clinic has served community members with all-encompassing care since beginning operations in December 2022. Many personal stories illustrate the clinic’s importance to the community; for example, a care-reluctant patient sought care at the mobile wellness clinic and discovered dangerously high blood sugar levels. Fortunately, the clinic staff were able to quickly intervene and saved the patient’s life.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Pediatric Mobile Health
Hennepin Healthcare’s Pediatric Mobile Health program started during the COVID-19 pandemic with the goal of ensuring that children receive preventative care such routine childhood immunizations. The racial awakening occurring adjacent to the pandemic, which highlighted the long-standing lack of access to care in the community, also fueled the momentum behind the clinic. The mobile clinic team achieved its goal by going door-to-door providing well child checks and immunizations to children. The program since has implemented additional services, including primary pediatric care, partum care for the birthing dyad, referrals back to a medical home, specialty care or community resources for social needs.
The mobile clinic brings pediatric care to families who are hesitant and/or unable to visit the hospital or off-site clinic. Full-time staff, including a nurse practitioner or pediatrician, pediatric provider trainee, and an emergency medical technician, operate the clinic. Staff also screen each family for social determinants of health. Patients who screen positive are referred to clinics or community organizations and resources to help families with their needs.
The program is grant-funded and bills insurance when appropriate. The program collaborates with other departments within the hospital, including the information technology department, to ensure the clinic has the bandwidth to document in electronic health records. The mobile clinic also partners with local schools and community organizations, such as Second Harvest Heartland to help families facing food insecurity and school districts and Head Start Centers to help with childcare resources.
The Pediatric Mobile Health Program has successfully increased access to care by ensuring continuity of care. When families are screened for social needs, community health workers ensure that patients follow through with referrals and applications are completed if necessary. The program also decreased Emergency Department visits, which helps lower costs and provider burnout.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Rooftop Farm
Boston Medical Center’s (BMC’s) Rooftop Farms opened in 2017 as part of the Nourishing Communities program, which includes the Preventative Food Pantry and Teaching Kitchen. A second farm will open in the spring of 2024, bringing the total growing space to approximately square feet. With two farms, the program will yield 10,000 pounds of fresh, organically grown produce annually to distribute throughout the food pantry, a low-cost farmer’s market, and our kitchens. The farm partners with internal departments and organizations in the Boston area to host team–building, volunteer, and educational opportunities focused on growing food, nutrition, and green infrastructure.
The hospital employs two part-time farm staff who focus on food production, education, and community outreach. The program also sponsors two to four interns per year who assist the farm staff and earn experience in rooftop farming and community engagement. The program’s educational component reaches a wide swath of the community, from public school students to immigrant groups, to patients, employees, and clinical staff. For example, the farm reported more than 1,300 visits in 2023. in 2023, 50 percent goes to patients facing food insecurity who visit the food pantry, 41 percent goes to the general community through the low-cost farmers market, and 10 percent goes to the kitchens.
Since opening seven years ago, the rooftop farm has grown approximately 30,000–35,000 pounds of food for community members, with approximately 75 percent directly reaching those who are low–income or experiencing food insecurity. The original farm also has engaged individuals in tours, volunteer days, and educational events more than 9,000 times, providing community members with a forum to connect with each other, learn about green innovation, and experience a hospital space that builds healthy communities in multiple ways. With a second farm opening, BMC expects to double its impact and continue to grow its community partnerships, aiming to support fair Boston food system that provides workforce development, climate resilience, and nourishing food for all people.
To learn more about the Rooftop Farm, please visit this link.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Sustainability Program
Boston Medical Center (BMC) began its sustainability journey in 2012 after recognizing that the communities it serves are disproportionately affected by climate change. Implementing sustainability efforts is part of the health care the hospital provides, with a focus on improving energy efficiency, reducing carbon emissions, decreasing operating costs, and increasing access to care. BMC first reassessed its real estate portfolio to maximize the impact of every square foot, which led to the sale of several real estate assets. The proceeds then were used to upgrade other buildings for increased energy efficiency. BMC reduced 300,000 square feet while increasing its capacity to care for patients: patient volumes increased by almost 30 percent.
BMC’s climate mitigation work covers a variety of entities that all aim to serve the local community. BMC is the largest safety net hospital in New England; 73 percent of the hospital’s patients are covered by public insurance, and many reside in communities facing environmental inequalities. In 2022, BMC opened the Brockton Behavioral Health Center, the first net-zero behavioral health facility in the United States. The center is powered by solar energy and heated by geothermal wells. Since spring 2017, Boston Medical Center has generated much of its own electricity and heat through a natural gas–fired, two-megawatt combined heat and power plant, also known as cogeneration. The plant operates at 70 percent efficiency compared with a typical gas-fired power plant’s 35 percent efficiency. It also has “black start” capability, meaning that if the electric grid goes down, the hospital can use the cogeneration plant in combination with a recently-installed Tesla battery system to heat and power its inpatient units on an “island” for months at a time, as long as it has a natural gas supply.
In 2016, BMC took a major step toward a carbon-neutral campus with an innovative solar purchase and partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Post Office Square Redevelopment Corporation. Through this partnership, BMC invested 255,000 solar panels across 650 acres in North Carolina. BMC purchases 26 percent of the power the solar facility produces, which is equivalent to 100 percent of BMC’s electricity consumption.
BMC’s reduced physical footprint and efforts to improve energy efficiency reduced utility costs significantly which generated savings that were reinvested back into patient care. Between 2011 and 2022, BMC reduced carbon emissions by 91 percent and electric consumption by 29 percent. These savings have enabled the reinvestment of funds in patient care and other sustainability projects, such as the opening of the Brockton Behavioral Health Center.
To learn more about BMC’s sustainability efforts, please visit their website through this link.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Feed1st Program
In 2010, a group of University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine medical students, University of Chicago faculty, and Comer Children’s Hospital staff started the Feed1st program after one of the hospital Chaplains discovered many parents were going hungry at their child’s bedside during a hospital stay. The goal of the Feed1st program is to address hunger in the healthcare setting and minimize the stigma surrounding food insecurity.
The Feed1st program operates 11 food pantry sites throughout UChicago Medicine’s facilities, including the adult, pediatric, inpatient, and outpatient areas of academic health system’s South Side medical campus. The pantry sites are strategically located in emergency departments, patient waiting areas, family lounges, and a hospital retail cafeteria. The program primarily serves community members from the South Side of Chicago, which has some of the highest food insecurity rates in the city; however, the pantry sites are available to everyone in the UChicago Medicine community, including staff.
It takes a village to operate a hospital pantry program at this scale. The hospital and individual departments provide Feed1st with funding support and space for pantry shelves and storages; Clinical staff champions, medical students, undergraduates, and other volunteers keep the pantry sites and storages stocked regularly and well maintained.
The food in the pantry sites is provided by the Greater Chicago Food Depository. The UChicago Medicine Garden Committee also provides fresh produce during harvest seasons throughout the year. The Feed1st Community Advisory Committee, comprised of parents, patients, concerned community members, hospital administrators, faculty, students, and others, plays a consistent role in ensuring the program meets the needs of the people we serve. Feed1st engages clinical staff in individual departments to help monitor and restock pantry shelves and communicate with patients about the program.
the Feed1st program had distributed more than 94 tons of food to more than 88,000 people since opening in 2010. The UChicago Medicine Garden Committee has provided more than 6,000 pounds of fresh produce to the Feed1st pantry sites since May 2022. The Feed1st program also released a toolkit on how to launch a no questions asked food pantry system. To read the newest version of the Feed1st toolkit, click here.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Mobile Medicine Program
Atrium Health launched two Mobile Medicine programs to improve access to care for their patient populations. Three Care Everywhere primary care units, along with Drive to Thrive, a mobile OB-GYN unit, aim to increase access to care by tackling transportation challenges, language barriers, and lack of insurance. Specifically, Care Everywhere brings clinical care to areas where traditional clinics may not be convenient or accessible, provides resources that help meet acute social needs, and connects patients to a primary care medical home. Drive to Thrive works to decrease unintended pregnancies via increased access to education and contraception and to connect patients in underserved communities to prenatal care earlier in their pregnancies to improve overall health outcomes.
The Mobile Medicine units park at different locations each weekday based on patient need. Atrium Health strategically chose locations using a data-informed approach that paired internal patient data with publicly available U.S. census data to target communities with the greatest health needs and social risk factors. Care Everywhere unit services include short-term and long-lasting health concerns, and Drive to Thrive primarily focuses on obstetrics and education. Neither program requires appointments, enabling patients to visit at their convenience. Both programs offer additional wellness services, such as referrals to other Atrium Health facilities and connections to resources for non–health care needs.
The Care Everywhere units were primarily funded by The Tepper Foundation and Truist Foundation, among other community funders. The Drive to Thrive unit received funding from a retired OB-GYN and other community donors. Both units required collaboration with nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and other community organizations to understand patient needs fully.
As a vertically integrated health care system, Atrium Health maintains an extensive inpatient and outpatient database of electronic health records that enables in-depth analysis of health care utilization and health outcomes across the system’s footprint. The Care Everywhere units launched in fall 2022, and the Drive to Thrive unit launched in January 2023. The Mobile Medicine program is expected to serve more than 480 patients by the end of 2023. Key program outcomes include increasing the establishment of ongoing support through placement with a primary medical home and connecting patients to care and social needs support through screening, diagnosis, and referrals to specialty care.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Sustainability Program
University of California (UC) Davis Health recognizes the importance of creating a resilient and sustainable health care model that celebrates the intersection between human and climate health. The goal of UC Davis Health’s sustainability practices is to reduce the health system’s environmental footprint by identifying climate mitigation strategies that meet the needs of patients and employees while preserving the quality of care. Areas of focus include procurement, resource conservation, transportation, expanding outreach and education to increase participation in sustainability efforts, waste reduction, and accountability.
UC Davis Health’s sustainability efforts reach beyond the health system into the community. With a focus on clean energy, the health system is expanding its solar energy portfolio and reducing energy usage in the operating rooms by replacing lights with LED bulbs and implementing HVAC setbacks. Another focus is reducing water use through operational adjustments in the central plant and a turf watering reduction initiative that stopped irrigating non-functional turfs on campus. The health system also provides an emission-free bus service, Causeway Connection, that runs daily between the hospital’s main campus and Sacramento.
UC Davis Health has multiple partners, including the Sacramento Tree Foundation, which helps plan California drought tolerant landscaping throughout the health system’s campus. Other partnerships, such as Copia, a food recovery company, and California Safe Soil, a manufacturer that uses food scraps for high-quality fertilizer, help divert UC Davis Health’s food waste. A partnership with Stryker, a medical technologies corporation, has helped the health system reduce the number of single-use devices used in operating rooms.
UC Davis Health has seen invaluable outcomes from the sustainability strategies. Through HVAC setbacks in the operating rooms, the emissions saved thus far are equivalent to taking 63 cars off the road. Through operational adjustments in the system’s central plant, UC Davis Health saved three million gallons of water between 2020 and 2022.
https://sustainability.ucdavis.edu/goals
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Sustainability Program
The Ohio State University has been working on a sustainability program for decades. In 2015, formal goals were set to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and a number of other resource stewardship goals to achieve by 2025: increasing locally sourced food, increasing ecosystem services, reducing potable water consumption, reaching zero waste, increasing energy efficiency, and developing standards for preferred products. The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center developed a formal program around 2017, and then joined the Health Care Climate Council and the Health Care Climate Challenge in 2020 to support its sustainability goals.
The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center is implementing multiple sustainability strategies through a small team of dedicated employees. The sustainability program encompasses all medical center facilities and integrates the university resource stewardship goals into all we do such as obtaining supplies, diverting waste, and tracking energy use with smart meters that can obtain real-time data on utility usage throughout the buildings. The medical center also prioritizes sustainability in the operating room by switching to a lower greenhouse gas emissions alternative anesthesia and incorporating low-flow strategies and diverting clinical plastics. The medical center has purchases a bedpan made of 90 percent recycled materials, integrated through their sustainable procurement guidelines.
The Ohio State University partners with ENGIE North America, a commercial electricity provider, and Axium, a manager of infrastructure assets to increase energy efficiency. In fiscal year 2022, all medical center-owned buildings decreased energy use intensity by 4.7 percent from fiscal year 2020 and approximately 29 percent of the electricity supplied to the medical center at main campus and off-site medical center locations was carbon neutral with renewable energy credits. OSU also has adapted the College of Medicine’s curriculum to include sustainability education.
Through green building efforts, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center is recycling 98 percent of the waste materials from an under-construction inpatient hospital. The smart meters installed in the buildings have helped the sustainability team identify reduction strategies, culminating in a 5 percent reduction from fiscal year 2020.The medical center has reduced desflurane in the operating room by 48 percent, resulting in nearly $300,000 in cost savings over three years.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Reusable Isolation Gowns
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, in Los Angeles, employs more than 4,000 people and cares for 380,000 patients per year. As part of precaution protocol, every person entering a person’s room must wear an isolation gown. In 2012, the medical center used an average of 6,000 disposable isolation gowns per day, or 2.2 million gowns per year, and the academic and health care teams piloted a reusable isolation gowns program.
The program started as a pilot in the medical center’s largest and busiest and later expanded to other units gradually to avoid overwhelming staff. staff through flyers and meetings, emphasizing the increased protection the new reusable gowns offered. Unit leaders and the Linen Committee were integral in the transition and maintenance of the program.
Internally, the process required collaboration from nursing staff, unit directors, and infection control staff. Externally, program staff worked with multiple gown vendors to design a custom gown, as well as with vendors that fold, launder, and transfer gowns.
As of November 2015, the hospital has used more than 3.3 million reusable gowns, saved more than $1.1 million in purchasing costs, and diverted from the landfill.
Read the Case Study here.
