What’s being done to increase access to health services for Centre County residents
Here's some of what's being done:
Opening more offices
Through the data collection process of the 2016 CHNA, conducted every three years,
As defined by the
"Access to quality health care has been a concern in our region for several years as evidenced in our most recent Community Health Needs Assessment,"
With the
In addition to growing its primary care presence outside of
"We continue to recruit and attract providers who are committed to working in rural communities," Monica said. "We are dedicated to educating and training medical students and family medicine residents with the intent of attracting them to practice in rural communities."
Expanding specialty services
By recruiting more providers, Mount Nittany has been able to grow and expand the services it offers. By doing so, that saves people from having to take off work and drive an hour each direction to
"We believe that advancing the scope of services and access to care at the medical center in areas like cardiac catheterization, electrophysiology, orthopedic, radiation therapy, and other services, enables convenient access in our rural environment," Monica said.
Through the reinvestment of capital funds, Mount Nittany also opened the
"We have plans to continue investments in both our medical center and physician practice facilities to continue to grow services and increase access," Monica said.
Bringing care to the homes
Barriers to accessing health services go beyond location and transportation. With advances in medicine, people are living longer with complex conditions, and often have trouble leaving their homes. For some people, the only way they can leave their homes is in an ambulance.
"What we've noticed over the past three to four years is that our population is aging pretty significantly, we have aged, higher chronic disease,"
To answer the question of how to get people out of their homes and into a hospital who are really sick and have to travel an hour each way to see their doctor, Geisinger developed Geisinger at Home and enrolled its first patient in April.
As a personalized health care model, Geisinger at Home is not meant to replace a primary care physician, Tomcavage said, but rather to help integrate and coordinate among different health providers also from the perspective of the patient.
The home health team consists of a regional medical director, advanced practitioners, nurses, a community health assistant, pharmacists, dieticians and palliative care workers. The team visits the client, identified through
The goal of the program is to develop an optimized treatment plan for the patient to help stay ahead of medical complications and ultimately reduce ER visits and hospital stays.
Since the program started in the spring, Geisinger has seen a 40-45 percent reduction in both ER visits and hospital admissions.
"It's been pretty eye-opening to us and so rewarding and such a privilege to be able to go into patients' homes and help them," Tomcavage said.
Right now, Geisinger has about 450-500 patients enrolled in the program in the
Using telehealth and technology
The use of telehealth to help bring medical services to patients is still evolving in
State Sen.
Senate Majority Leader
"Obviously, time and money, the ability to travel, get off work, that's where telemediciine can be helpful," Corman said. "That's why a big component of this is broadband deployment and making sure everyone has access to broadband so they can do telemedicine."
Access to broadband, particularly in rural areas, is a barrier to opening up telemedicine opportunities for everyone, Corman said. Although the
Geisinger at Home is hoping to roll out its telemedicine component in March. Tomcavage said that the community health assistant would help the client get connected to an iPad, to connect with a doctor. The CHA can attach a stethoscope to the iPad, check the patient's heartbeat, breathing, oxygen levels, weight and blood pressure all digitally from the home.
"What we think this will do is really extend the reach of our program," Tomcavage said. "And also, if we have a patient who calls in and thinks 'I'm not feeling really well,' then maybe we can get our community health worker out quickly to do some telehealth connectivity with the docs, and maybe we can get sooner response times engaged."
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