A source of hope for at-risk youth. A hospital's community outreach efforts provide an alternative for troubled teens

In 1990 St. Bernardine Medical Center, San Bernardino, CA, initiated a mission project to reach out to youth and families in the hospital's service area. Increased unemployment, escalating crime, and a failing social structure had left many San Bernardino residents with few resources for breaking out of a cycle of crime and poverty fostered by their environment. Responding to the results of a community needs assessment, St. Bernardine mission project planners decided the project's first program should target at-risk youth. Collaborating with the San Bernardino County Probation Department, St. Bernardine began offering a variety of services to youth in the probation department's Regional Youth Educational Facility, which houses boys between the ages of 16 and 18, and the Kuiper Youth Center, which houses girls between 11 and 18 years old. Realizing that a truly effective program would have to maintain contact with youth after they left these facilities, St. Bernardine expanded its outreach efforts to include at-risk families as well. The mission project's 12-week Parenting Re-entry Program builds parenting skills by addressing a variety of topics, including values clarification, communication skills, and positive reentry into the community. In addition to the Parenting Re-entry Program, St. Bernardine, through its Family Focus Center, offers counseling services, an information referral library, and a Teen Focus Component that features evening basketball, a drama club, and other healthy alternatives for teens.     

Tailoring hospital marketing efforts to physicians' needs.

Marketing has become widely recognized as an important component of hospital management (Kotler and Clarke 1987; Ludke, Curry, and Saywell 1983). Physicians are becoming recognized as an important target market that warrants more marketing attention than it has received in the past (Super 1987; Wotruba, Haas, and Hartman 1982). Some experts predict that hospitals will begin focusing more marketing attention on physicians and less on consumers (Super 1986). Much of this attention is likely to take the form of practice management assistance, such as computer-based information system support or consulting services. The survey results reported here are illustrative only of how one hospital addressed the problem of physician need assessment. Other potential target markets include physicians who admit patients only to competitor hospitals and physicians who admit to multiple hospitals. The market might be segmented by individual versus group practice, area of specialization, or possibly even physician practice life cycle stage (Wotruba, Haas, and Hartman 1982). The questions included on the survey and the survey format are likely to be situation-specific. The key is the process, not the procedure. It is important for hospital marketers to recognize that practice management assistance needs will vary among markets (Jensen 1987). Therefore, hospitals must carefully identify their target physician market(s) and survey them about their specific needs before developing and implementing new physician marketing programs. Only then can they be reasonably confident that their marketing programs match their customers' needs.     

Cataract surgery in a community hospital outreach clinic: patients' costs and satisfaction.

A cataract day surgery service for the population of central Norfolk, UK, was provided by the main ophthalmic department in a district general hospital and in an outreach clinic in a community hospital 40 km distant. The outreach clinic aimed to extend the accessibility of this particular service in a rural area where many patients faced long journeys to the main hospital. Samples of 201 patients attending the main hospital for day cataract surgery and 198 patients attending the outreach clinic for the same procedure were identified. Patients were interviewed and given questionnaire forms to establish their general health before the operation, their arrangements to get to hospital and their satisfaction with the clinic and the care they had received. The sample of patients attending the outreach clinic was slightly older, less affluent and in slightly poorer general health than the patients attending the main hospital. The two samples were similar in terms of visual acuity after the operation, complication rates, satisfaction with the outcome of the operation and subsequent use of health services. The journey to hospital was quicker, more convenient and less costly for the outreach clinic patients than the main hospital patients. The net benefit to patients of the outreach clinic was estimated as pounds sterling 39,000 per annum. Satisfaction with administrative matters, facilities at the two clinics and the care received was high in both samples, but patients were significantly more satisfied with arrangements at the smaller outreach clinic. This evidence suggests that an outreach clinic in a small community hospital can provide cataract day surgery under local anaesthesia as effectively as a district centre, at a reduced social cost and with positive social benefits. Further study of heath service costs is vital, but political pressure to acknowledge patient preferences for more local services is growing.     

An evaluation of efforts to educate mothers about child development in pediatric office practices.

The efforts expended by pediatricians in a variety of private practice settings to educate mothers of first-born children about child behavior and development were examined in relation to various outcome measures of mother and child functioning over a time period of one-and-a-half years. Mothers learned more about child development in group settings than in solo practice settings, but differences between medical groups with and without nurse practitioners were not significant. Mothers receiving care from pediatricians who made at least a moderate effort to teach, learned more about child development, described more use of positive contact with their children, and felt they were helped more in their childrearing efforts than did mothers receiving care from pediatricians who made little effort to teach. However, there were no significant differences in measures of the child's developmental status related to physician teaching input, and mothers exposed to higher levels of teaching input reported more behavioral problems with their children. The most important predictor of the child's developmental status at 18 months of age was the amount of positive contact between mother and child at one year. It is suggested that the effects of changing the frequency of well-child visits on the mothers' interaction patterns with their children and on their feelings of being supported by the physician be ascertained before making recommendations about the optimal number of such visits.     

Communicating hospitals' concerns to legislators and the community

The time is past when voluntary hospitals could afford to be uninformed and inactive in public affairs. As decisions in the public sector increasingly threaten not-for-profit institutions, Catholic hospitals particularly must pursue an action-oriented program of communication with legislators and the community. At Carney Hospital, Boston, an especially effective forum for the past eight years has been buffet dinners held on a quarterly basis with state and congressional legislators and representatives of the hospital's management team, board of trustees, associate board, and medical staff. These dinner meetings provide a singular opportunity for law-makers to learn hospitals' perspective on key issues such as the effect of tightened reimbursement on care of the poor. The dinners not only have enhanced relations with legislators but also raised the consciousness of the business community, consumers, and the general public. Frequent mailings to legislators and members of the board of trustees and the associate board also have beeN helpful. The associate board was formed to augment the expertise of the board to trustees and to increase lay participation in the hospital's affairs. Composed of 20 lay leaders representing a diversity of disciplines, the associate board provides a strong base for influencing public policy and community action. Moreover, the hospital's various constituencies--physicians, employees, volunteers, and auxilians-are recruited as appropriate to contact legislators, write letters to the editor, and give media interviews. Also important in the facility's public affairs efforts have been timely responses to requests for action from The Catholic Health Association, the American Hospital Association, and the state hospital association.     

Risk-sharing integration efforts in the hospital sector.

The extent of hospital involvement in integrated delivery systems (IDSs) during 1996 was assessed by a national sample of 235 short-term private general hospitals. Two out of five hospitals were participating in networks with some financial risk sharing, and another third reported membership in IDS networks without financial obligations. Managed care's presence was the only significant factor moving hospitals from a stand-alone status to network membership. The decision to share financial risk was influenced not only by managed care pressures, but also by the level of local hospital competition and the severity of the inpatient case mix.     

Filling the gaps. Systems offer two models of care management: community outreach and inpatient care

The growing number of vulnerable people, such as the elderly and people with long-term disabilities, calls for healthcare providers to offer more programs to ensure a continuum of care. Client-focused care management programs offer access to such a continuum. Care managers understand services and reimbursement and can pull it all together for the client. The Sisters of Charity Health Care Systems, Cincinnati, have two models of care management. St. Joseph Coordinated Care provides extensive outreach to a large, culturally diverse New Mexico community, serving urban and rural clients. Penrose-St. Francis Healthcare System offers inpatient medical care management in Colorado. Coordinated Care at St. Joseph Healthcare System in Albuquerque is comprehensive, covering a wide spectrum of client needs--medical, social, and psychological. The program's central goal is to help individuals remain safely at home. Persistence and devotion to the client are the hallmarks of effective care management and the foundation of the new geriatric care management program at Penrose-St. Francis Healthcare System in Colorado Springs, CO. The program's goals are to improve inpatient geriatric care, smooth the patient's transition to alternative care settings, and ensure efficient and effective resource use during the patient's hospital stay.     

The characteristics of northern black churches with community health outreach programs.

OBJECTIVES. The Black church has a long history of addressing unmet health and human service needs, yet few studies have examined characteristics of churches involved in health promotion. METHODS. Data obtained from a survey of 635 Black churches in the northern United States were examined. Univariate and multivariate statistical procedures identified eight characteristics associated with community health outreach programs: congregation size, denomination, church age, economic class of membership, ownership of church, number of paid clergy, presence of other paid staff, and education level of the minister. RESULTS. A logistic regression model identified church size and educational level of the minister as the strongest predictors of church-sponsored community health outreach. The model correctly classified 88% of churches that conduct outreach programs. Overall, the model correctly classified 76% of churches in the sample. CONCLUSIONS. Results may be used by public health professionals and policy makers to enlist Black churches as an integral component for delivery of health promotion and disease prevention services needed to achieve the Year 2000 health objectives for all Americans.