George Helmy: What If a Community Health Center and a Major Health System Started Working as One?
George Helmy / LinkedIn

George Helmy: What If a Community Health Center and a Major Health System Started Working as One?

George Helmy, Executive Vice President, Chief External Affairs and Policy Officer at RWJBarnabas Health, shared a post on LinkedIn:

Five years ago, we asked a simple question: what if a community health center and a major health system stopped operating in parallel and started working as one?

The answer is playing out in Hudson County – and I’m proud to share it in a new op-ed I co-authored with Joan Dublin of Metropolitan Family Health Network, published today in NJ.com.

Metropolitan Family Health Network and RWJBarnabas Health have been meeting patients where they are in Hudson County: coordinating referrals, aligning clinical services, and addressing the barriers – transportation, language, cost, trust – that keep people from getting care.

Through Our Healthy Communities, the results speak for themselves: 1.7 million pounds of food delivered, 150,000+ free rides to appointments, 140,000+ patients connected with community health workers. And in Jersey City, a Food Farmacy that links prescriptions with nutrition support – because food insecurity and chronic disease are rarely separate problems.

New Jersey has shown what’s possible. Now we have to protect it.

Read more

Other articles on OncoDaily.