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:
- Improve access to health services
- Reduce the impact of behavioral health issues
- Improve health and wellness for older adults
- Reduce the burden of chronic disease
- 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.