2012 Outstanding Community Outreach: Providence Senior and Community Services
Providence Senior and Community Services
Renton
True to its Catholic roots, the Senior and Community Services programs of Providence Health & Services don’t merely provide clinical health care needs. The system forges a connected approach to services that include support for food and housing, as well as hospice, home infusion and health services to people of all ages facing chronic or life-limiting illnesses.
Providence’s newest initiative, the Program for All Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), integrates these services. The innovations collected under the program since 2004 enable those with chronic conditions to thrive in their communities rather than in nursing homes.
Technically, the concept is not really that new, notes Tom Lennon, Providence’s vice president of strategy and business development. The original mission of Mother Joseph and her fellow Sisters of Providence was to take care of people in their homes and to make sure they had decent shelter and basic education. “It wasn’t just about building hospitals,” Lennon says.
From its beginnings in 1858 at Fort Vancouver, in what was then Washington Territory, Providence has grown to preside over facilities in five states, from California to Alaska, with a special focus on patients in need by virtue of poverty, age or disadvantage. Providence Health & Services maintains 24 locations in Washington, employing more than 2,200 in the state.
While Providence’s Senior and Community Services are available to both young and old, Lennon observes that the typical beneficiary is someone advancing in age, suffering multiple conditions and needing coordination of all his or her care needs. The PACE program begins with housing, especially the 500 units of supportive housing maintained in partnership with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Low-income residents pay no more than 30 percent of their income for shelter.
As Lennon points out, that’s only where PACE starts. “We track and monitor to make sure they have basic checkups, dental care, are exercising well, eating well and optimizing their health as much as they can.”
PACE, serving 400 people each day, is currently small, but it is part of a much larger network of services. Providence serves 1,900 people daily through its hospice and palliative care programs, and roughly 1,000 more through home health services. For all senior and community services, Providence estimates that it touches the lives of more than 14,000 individuals each day.
SILVER AWARDS
Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Seattle
Having treated more than 150,000 patients in the past decade, SCCA combines expertise from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, UW Medicine and Seattle Children’s Hospital. The treatment center not only brings together the resources from these facilities, but also has used those resources to create a network for community outreach stretching across Washington, Alaska and Montana. This network includes a consortium of 11 community hospitals and oncology medical practices as well as the mobile Mammovan, which increases women’s access to digital mammography. In addition to increasing its patient base, the SCCA is growing its physical plant through the construction of a new proton therapy treatment center. — Sarah Dewey
UW Medicine, Seattle
The list of health care delivery venues managed or served by Nancy Sugg and her staff tells a story of hope and “small victories” for poor and underserved Seattleites who gain access to first-class health care: Pioneer Square Clinic, the Third Avenue Center serving Angeline’s Day Center for Women, the Robert Clewis Center for intravenous drug users, the 1811 Eastlake center for late-stage alcoholics and drug users with complex medical problems, the Downtown Emergency Services Center, St. Martin de Porres Men’s Shelter, the Compass Hygiene Center, the 34-bed 800 Jefferson Terrace respite program, and Harborview Medical Mental Health Center. — Steve Wehrly
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