Health systems are focusing on becoming a whole-person healthcare provider, a break from the historic emphasis on acute care.
They are expanding their reach with hospital-at-home, telehealth, surgery centers, clinics and digital campaigns to bring healthy as well as sick patients into their networks. There is also a renewed focus on social determinants of health, as hospitals are launching new initiatives to tackle food insecurity, homelessness and behavioral health and addiction more than before.
A few recent examples include:
1. Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare will become Intermountain Health, a small change but the new name signals an increased emphasis on whole-health focused initiatives while staying true to the health system's rich foundation of providing extraordinary care. The rebrand will roll out next year. Intermountain's St. Joseph Hospital in Denver also announced in September that it is investing $30,000 to address housing insecurity.
2. Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente and Boston-based Mass General Brigham made financial commitments to the "Food is Medicine" programing as part of a federal initiative to tackle food insecurity. Kaiser will invest $50 million into the program and Mass General pledged $8.4 million. Funds go to screening patients for food and nutrition security, improving programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Women, Infants, and Children, and other medically tailored meal plans for patients.
3. Detroit-based Henry Ford Health and Acadia Healthcare in Tennessee broke ground on a new behavioral health and teaching hospital which will be in West Bloomfield, Michigan. The hospital will have a 192 bed capacity and have increased behavioral health resources for the community.
4. WellSpan Health, based in York, Pa., is investing $30 million into projects that will expand behavioral health services so the system can better meet patients' needs.