Question

Hospitals provide direct patient care for members of their community, for which they are compensated by third party payers or directly by the patient. Find and provide examples of other ways that hospitals benefit the community in which they are located.

Answer 1

Apart from just providing direct patient care for members of their community, there are a lot of other ways in which the hospitals benefit the community in which they are located. The not-for-profit hospitals keep a track of the social and economic status of the community they live in. If they find that the community they are living in is facing some major socio-economic issues like a financial problem or a language problem, they provide full assistance to the members of the community to afford health insurance, minimize the total cost in preventing a chronic medical condition, and provide full reinforcement to their own workforce needs.

Hospitals finds out the true needs of the most vulnerable residents of the community and different programs and services are developed based on the results. One of the way to deliver this is though a Family Resource Centre. These Family Resource Centre provide different services to their community like food stamp program, assistance program, health care enrollment, mental health services and low key mental health counselor.

There are also a lot of community conversation events organized by different hospitals on different levels which involves a community-wide meetings of all the stakeholders which emphasizes on the health problems and their solutions according to the community needs of the region. Dialoges are being held to find out the social determinants of health in the community and relevent strategies are being proposed to overcome these challenges. Then there also programs for community health assessments which includes a community-wide health survey depending upon the specific needs of a community.