Featured: Converting the Currency of Patient Access Into Organizational Growth and Economic Development
By E.W. Tibbs
The best way to provide exemplary patient access is to go to where the patients are. It seems like a simple approach, but healthcare tends to invest in communities by population density usually defined by home address. My team at Centra Health, a four-hospital, not-for-profit integrated healthcare delivery system in Virginia, took a different approach, and it paid off in ways we could not imagine. In addition to providing unparalleled patient access to services in our community that were previously inaccessible, we were able to increase job growth, create economic development and provide organizational growth. Towns that were once places to drive through became robust and thriving communities.