Tag: community health

GoodWill’s Lessons for Health Care

Oct 18, 2023

By KIM BELLARD

The New York Times had an interesting profile this weekend about how Goodwill Industries is trying to revamp its online presence – transitioning from its legacy ShopGoodwill.com to a new platform GoodwillFinds — in the amidst of numerous other online resellers. It zeroed in on the key distinction Goodwill has:

But Goodwill isn’t doing this just because it wants to move into the 21st century. More than 130,000 people work across the organization, while two million people received assistance last year through its programs, which include career navigation and skills training. Those opportunities are funded through the sales of donated items.

Moreover, the article continued: “Last year, Goodwill helped nearly 180,000 people through its job services.”

In case you weren’t aware, Goodwill has long had a mission of hiring people who otherwise face barriers to employment, such as veterans, those who lack job experience or educational qualifications, or have handicaps. As it says in its mission statement, it “works to enhance the dignity and quality of life of individuals and families by strengthening communities, eliminating barriers to opportunity, and helping people in need reach their full potential through learning and the power of work.”

As PYMNTS wrote earlier this month: “Every purchase made through GoodwillFinds initiates a chain reaction, providing job training, resume assistance, financial education, and essential services to individuals in need within the community where the item was contributed.”

I want healthcare to have that kind of commitment to patients.

Healthcare claims to be all about patients. You won’t find many that openly talk about profits or return on equity. Reading mission statements of healthcare organizations yield the kinds of pronouncements one might expect. A not-entirely random sample:

Cleveland Clinic: “to be the best place for care anywhere and the best place to work in healthcare.”

Can Community Be a Medicine?

Jul 27, 2020

By ARAS TOKER

Analysis on peer accountability focused community building efforts in making lifestyle changes through digital therapeutic programs

Before we jump ahead to the medicine piece, what the heck does a community even mean? In the past, communities were more likely associated with a group of people living in the same physical location such as a neighborhood, school, or a town. I remember my neighborhood soccer community very well, for instance. Instead of being born into or trying to fit in, community is something we choose for ourselves and express our identities through. With the advancement of accessing the high-speed internet globally, today’s community has no physical or geographical boundaries.

Community builder Fabian Pfortmüller brilliantly explains the difference between communities and other groups. He asserts that unlike project teams or companies who are optimizing for external purposes (collective goals); communities optimize for internal purposes (the relationship and the shared identity). His definition of a community deeply resonated with me and the communities that I had the opportunity to build.

Image for post — *Pfortmüller’s definition of community*

Want to help Technologies for Healthy Communities?

Nov 22, 2016• 2

By ALEXANDRA CAMESAS

Health 2.0 is actively expanding Technology for Healthy Communities and looking for large healthcare organizations and foundations to help support technology adoption at a community level.

Technology for Healthy Communities is a dynamic pilot program designed to catalyze the adoption of technologies in communities. The program fosters the development of sustainable partnerships to address the social determinants of health in the under-served regions that need it the most. Over 200 innovators across the U.S. submitted applications to the program, and through curated matchmaking and access to funding, selected innovators were matched with three participating communities to conduct pilot projects.

Snapshot of the three pilots:

Spartanburg, SC: ACCESS Health Spartanburg, a non-profit agency primarily working with the uninsured population, is piloting with Healthify to provide community interventions for social determinants of health at the point of care. With support from Spartanburg Way to Wellville and the Mary Black Foundation, the pilot aims to address current pain points in community health care, such as the inefficiency of addressing social needs of patients and helping to make case management easier.
Jacksonville, FL: The City of Jacksonville and the Health Planning Council of NE Florida, with support from the Clinton Foundation is piloting with CTY to deploy its signature product, NuminaTM. With this technology, bicycle and pedestrian traffic data will be collected to assess current safety conditions and plan improvements in the built environment for residents to be more physically active.
Alameda County, CA: The Community Health Center Network is piloting with Welkin Health to implement a case management tool that engages members and eases current healthcare worker burden. Together, they will pilot this case management tool in four centers to help community health workers to effectively and efficiently coordinate care.

Due to the high demand from tech innovators and communities, Health 2.0 is expanding the program to new communities, tech startups and organizations who can benefit from technology adoption. By addressing the social determinants of health, the program has the potential to implement unique tech applications and address some of the most important systemic issues at the community level.

Health 2.0 is looking for partners such as foundations, large health systems and corporations who want to support pilots to test innovations in communities, interact with the fastest growing startups in the tech scene, and help create business opportunities for technology companies. Program sponsors will also have the opportunity to address local health needs by bringing exciting, new technologies to under-served regions across the U.S.

The program will focus on tools that support access to a healthy lifestyle, in categories such as:

Access to healthcare services
Food insecurity
Affordable housing
Behavioral/mental health

If you are interested in partnering with Health 2.0 to help deliver technology to communities, contact patrick@health2con.com to learn about opportunities to support the program.

Alexandra Camesas is a program manager at Catalyst @ Health 2.0

ONC launches Pilot Program to Catalyze Health IT Innovation

Nov 10, 2014

Investments in digital health have never been higher, with reports indicating that $5 Billion has been invested in health tech startups in 2014. Encouraged by the increasingly favorable changes being made to health policy in the U.S., many entrepreneurs have answered the call to action to solve problems related to health care delivery and access, disease management, and cost reduction. Venture capitalists recognize the value of innovation in health care through technology yet few of these tools have gained widespread adoption. Health care organizations and providers are wary of implementing new technologies that haven’t been tested for fear of disrupting their workflows and causing more problems than before.

Market R&D Pilot Challenge Website

Recognizing these high barriers to entry for digital health startups the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is hosting the Market R&D Pilot Challenge to bridge the gap between health care providers and innovators. This competition, which is administered by Health 2.0, may award pilot proposals in four different domains: clinical environments (e.g., hospitals, ambulatory care, surgical centers), public health and community environments (e.g., public health departments, community health workers, mobile medical trucks, and school-based clinics), consumer health (e.g., self-insured employers, pharmacies, laboratories) and research and data (e.g, novel ways of collecting data from patients).Continue reading…

Health Reform and the Mission of Nonprofit Hospitals

Apr 28, 2014• 1

By Mary Crossley

Ever since 1969, when the IRS established the “community benefit” standard for hospital tax exemption, nonprofit hospitals have been able to achieve federal tax exemption without any precise accountability for the benefits they provided.

The ACA’s passage, however, ushered in significant changes to federal tax-exemption standards for hospitals.

The new § 501(r) of the Internal Revenue Code requires hospitals to take numerous measures, including establishing written financial assistance policies, limiting the amount charged to patients eligible for financial assistance, and limiting their use of “extraordinary collection actions” against patients.

These requirements responded to concerns about how some purportedly “charitable” hospitals treated uninsured patients and, more generally, hospitals’ lack of transparency regarding indigent care.

They stop well short, however, of requiring hospitals to provide any particular quantum of free care to patients unable to pay.

Section 501(r) also incorporates a different tack, requiring that at least once every three years, a hospital conduct a “community health needs assessment” (CHNA) and adopt an “implementation strategy” to respond to the needs identified by the assessment.

The needs assessment requirement is novel as a matter of federal tax policy, but is similar to mandates previously existing in a number of states.

As announced in the statute and fleshed out in Proposed Regulations issued by the IRS in April 2013, the CHNA requirement entails a series of steps.

In identifying and prioritizing community health needs, a hospital must take into account “input from persons who represent the broad interests of the community served by the hospital facility, including those with special knowledge of or expertise in public health.”

Once the assessment is completed, the hospital must make a report on it “widely available to the public” and adopt an “implementation strategy” to meet the community health needs it identified.