Community Benefit

As a not-for-profit, independent health system, Community Memorial Healthcare is fully committed to serving the healthcare needs of our community. Through extensive charitable giving, we ensure residents have access to care, education, prevention and support programs, and more.

Community Benefit services promote health and healing & focus on addressing the identified unmet health needs of the community. For a program or service to be considered a community benefit it must: improve access to health care; or enhance the health of the community; or advance medical or health care knowledge; or reduce the burden of government or other nonprofit community efforts.

During 2021 Community Memorial made more than $67.6 million in Community Benefit contributions. Of that, more than $692,000 was provided in financial assistance (charity care) costs where no reimbursement is received and $21 million in Medi-Cal and other programmatic shortfalls, which is the difference between what the hospital is reimbursed for care to beneficiaries and the actual cost of providing that care. Other benefits included $1.8 million in community building activities (community support, physician recruiting) and $20.5 million in Medicare shortfall. Programs supported were chosen based on the 3-year Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) from 2019.

The 2019 CHNA identified 5 top health priorities for Ventura County:

1. Improve access to health services
2. Reduce the impact of behavioral health issues
3. Improve health and wellness for older adults
4. Reduce the burden of chronic disease
5. Address social needs

Community Memorial Healthcare provided support for each priority area:

Improve Access to Health Services

• Collaborated with Clinicas del Camino Real to enhance patient access to specialty care. Investment in technology has reduced the no-show rate and the appointment backlog. Ongoing participation with Gold Coast Health Plan on an initiative to improve “children and adolescents’ access to primary care practitioners” and increase HEDIS scores for GCHP.
• Continued to improve physician resident training at the Community Memorial Graduate Medical Education program through faculty recruitment and local partnerships.
• Enhanced the physician resident free clinic program in underserved communities.
• Continued growth of the multi-specialty Health Center in Ojai. This clinic was closed in 2020 due to COVID-19 and reopened in 2021 with renewed family practice and specialty physicians.
• Participated in the United Way’s Building Healthy Smiles campaign to address the need for access to dental care.
• Recruited specialty and primary care physicians.

Reduce the Impact of Behavioral Health Issues

• Launched telemedicine (virtual/video visits) for Behavioral Health
• Enhanced access to providers by collaborating with Clinicas del Camino Real and working with Vista del Mar for developing integrated services at our outpatient health centers.

Improve Health and Wellness for Older Adults

• Provided in-kind support and staff engagement to the exploration and development efforts of senior independent living support in the Ojai valley and west Ventura.
• Launched Caregiver Navigation program to reduce the burden of caregiving and improve health outcomes for caregivers and their patients.

Reduce the Burden of Chronic Disease

• Community Memorial Health Centers relaunched intensive case management to improve coordination of care. The Chronic Care Management program has more than 1,000 patients.
• Community Memorial HealthAware promoted cardiac and vascular health by providing thousands of community members with ongoing health education, support, free screenings, and health assessments.
• Provided free chronic disease detection and screening services.

Address Social Needs

• Implemented electronic prescribing at Community Memorial Health Centers for controlled substances to set a general standard of prescribing opioid pain medication to reduce opioid overdose related deaths.
• Three physicians obtained certification for prescribing suboxone for opioid dependence treatment.
• Contracted the services of a physician who specializes in Addiction Medicine to provide leadership and improve the quality of Community Memorial Addiction Medicine.
• Connected with west Ventura schools to contribute to motivating students to graduate from high school including activities such as career day, CPR and first aid education, and disaster planning.
• Offered educational programs.
• Hosted support groups that are widely available to the public.
• Provided recuperative care to the homeless with short-term care and case management.
• Piloted a project to reduce food insecurity by connecting high need/high risk clients to federal/state/local food access programs and food resources for their unmet needs. The project administers food insecurity screening in clinical environments and make referrals to the county for enrollment in CalFresh and/or WIC.