Memorial Medical Center and HSHS St. John’s Hospital, in collaboration with the SIU Center for Family Medicine, will extend the Access-To-Health Collaborative in Springfield’s Enos Park neighborhood for another three years and expand it to include the Pillsbury Mills neighborhood.
Expanding on their joint community project that launched in 2015 to improve the health needs of Enos Park’s 2,300 residents, the newest phase of the initiative will expand the project to Pillsbury Mills, another low-income neighborhood of about 1,900 residents directly east of Enos Park.
HSHS St. John’s Hospital and Memorial Medical Center will each contribute up to $250,000 to fund the program serving Enos Park and Pillsbury Mills for 2019 through 2021. The SIU Center for Family Medicine, a federally qualified health center, was chosen to operate the program. Each hospital had provided $250,000 to fund the program for the first three years.
The program has increased the number of people in Enos Park with a medical home, reduced the emergency department visits for non-emergent health issues and improved self-sufficiency of program participants.
Identifying community health needs
The two nonprofit hospitals and the Sangamon County Department of Public Health also announced their separate community health priorities as part of a community health needs assessment, which nonprofit hospitals must complete every three years.
The hospitals and the Sangamon County Public Health Department asked Sangamon County residents to rank community health needs through an online survey earlier this year. The hospitals and the public health department will discuss their new health priorities at a Citizens Club of Springfield meeting at 8 a.m. Friday, Dec. 21, at the Hoogland Center for the Arts, 420 S. Sixth St. The meeting is open to the public.
Memorial Medical Center’s priorities for the next three years beginning in 2019 are access to care; mental health; substance abuse; and maternal and infant health. More details about these priorities are available on the hospital’s website at MemorialMedical.com.
“Memorial’s focus is to address the crucial health needs of the people and communities we serve,” said Ed Curtis, president and CEO of Memorial Health System, the parent organization of Memorial Medical Center.
HSHS St. John’s priorities are access to care; child maltreatment; maternal and infant health; and drug abuse. For more details, visit St-Johns.org.
“The priorities identified reinforce the need to address basic needs and social determinants of health as a way to improve the overall health and quality of life in our community,” said E.J. Kuiper, president and CEO of the HSHS Central Illinois Division Hospitals and interim CEO of HSHS St. John’s Hospital.
The Sangamon County Department of Public Health’s priorities are drug abuse; mental health; and maternal and infant health.