WakeMed Recognized by NCHA for Initiative Aimed Improving Access to Health Care

July 18, 2024 — WakeMed’s Center for Community Health, Innovation, and Equity has been awarded the North Carolina Hospital Association’s Healthier Communities Award. This award recognizes collaborative work by an NCHA member institution to promote health and well-being by addressing an identified need. WakeMed received the award July 18 at NCHA’s Summer Membership Meeting.

The WakeMed Center for Community Health in Southeast Raleigh opened in October 2022 as an integrated care approach to improve access and health outcomes for undeserved and vulnerable populations. The Center brings many collaborative, community-based population health programs together under one roof to meet the diverse and complex needs of patients suffering from homelessness, mental illness, and/or advanced chronic medical issues. It serves as a safety net for those without another safety net.

Led by a team of WakeMed mental health and medical clinicians, the Center provides coordinated, holistic care in efforts to stabilize the health conditions of some of our sickest and most vulnerable residents and collaboration with local partners and providers to establish long term medical and behavioral health homes.

“A lot of the things driving poor outcomes have nothing to do with the things we are doing inside our hospitals or clinics. It is the struggles that our patients are facing on a daily basis, the social determinants of health, the poverty, the lack of access to insurance and mental health care,” said Dr. Brian Klausner, executive medical director of the Center for Community Health.

The focus of the WakeMed Center for Community Health is to work to identify the community’s sickest patients who lack community connections and resources, help empower them to improve both their physical and mental health and connect them with local clinics and resources to maximize their long-term health and well-being. Individualized care plans are developed with the goal of transitioning the patient to a long-term medical home with our partners for ongoing care, therefore, greatly reducing the need for more emergency visits and hospital readmissions.

Patients have access to primary care, psychiatry, trauma therapy, spiritual care, case management and community services to put them on a trajectory for long-term success in the community. The Center also provides mobile and home health services, and education. Physical and mental health services are based on population health principles and trauma-informed care to meet the diverse, complex needs of the community’s highest risk patients.

In less than two years, the Center for Community Health has served thousands of Raleigh’s most vulnerable patients, providing them with comprehensive care and connections to valuable community resources.

This innovative model of care and facility upfitting was made possible with meaningful support of the City of Raleigh, funding through the ARPA Community Health Initiative program, and the WakeMed Foundation.

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About NCHA

Founded in 1918, North Carolina Healthcare Association (NCHA) is the united voice of the North Carolina healthcare community. Representing more than 130 hospitals, health systems, physician groups and other healthcare organizations, NCHA works with our members to improve the health of North Carolina communities by advocating for sound public policies and collaborative partnerships and by providing insights, services, support, and education to expand access to high quality, efficient, affordable, and integrated health care for all North Carolinians.

For more information, contact:

Stephanie Strickland, NCHA, sstrickland@ncha.org, 919-677-4241
Kristin Kelly, WakeMed, krkelly@wakemed.org, 919-350-5921