
Rural Health Network Planning Program – Northwest Hospital Alliance
The Georgia Health Policy Center recently spoke to Caryl Johnston, executive director for the Northwest Hospital Alliance in Idaho, about how the growing network is planning to expand the use of postdischarge social service referral to provide wraparound resources to individuals living in rural counties.
To date, what has been the biggest accomplishment or win for your network planning?
We have been using the North Idaho Connections robust social service database for about five years with Kootenai Health. While the COVID-19 pandemic slowed our progress a bit, we want to expand to our rural region. Patients with higher level of care needs are transferred from rural hospitals to Kootenai Health. But when they are ready for discharge, we need to be sure they get those social services that they need to be successful in their care management. These include resources that really impact those social determinants of health, like food insecurity or help with transportation. While we have a good start at Kootenai Health, we want to expand it out to our seven Critical Access Hospitals that are out in those rural and frontier communities.
What is a tip or early learning that you would share with an organization launching a similar network?
One of the first things to think about is what your purpose is and then you want to bring everybody to the table who can be part of that thought process or might touch that purpose. For us, it was being able to provide wraparound care for people as opposed to a more siloed approach where you send them one direction or the other. I think the biggest thing is implementing some passion in people to work together. In the past, people tried to create a resource directory on paper, and it was always out of date. We tried to set up our own database and it was overwhelming for us. So, we ended up contracting with a company that does that work for us, which has made it easier. My advice would be do not think that you have to do it all yourself. Do not hesitate to find those resources out there that can help you be successful.
How do you see participation in the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy’s Network Planning grant impacting your broader health improvement efforts?
We wrote this grant as a regional effort, but it seems to be taking on a statewide impact now. We started the North Idaho Connections five years ago, and another state organization, called the Idaho Health Data Exchange, saw what we were doing, and they started setting it up for the southern part of the state. United Ways have now gotten involved with us, too. So, while we initially thought we were reaching the 10 counties of northern Idaho, we are now in conversations for a statewide approach. This planning grant gives us the opportunity to bring people together. It seems to be taking on a life of its own and people like it and what it is capable of.
Do you have an example or story that illustrates the value of planning for a rural health network instead of a single organization at the helm?
At this stage, it has more to do with bringing all these organizations together, as opposed to working in silos. The CEOs of my hospitals make up the board for the Northwest Hospital Alliance, and we have 15 different peer groups that are made up of directors of particular services. With this grant, we created a steering committee, and it is made up of different people from law enforcement, emergency medical services, hospitals, clinics, school districts — anybody that would have a reason to refer somebody to a social service resource. We invited all of them to the table. For this vulnerable population, it is hard on them if we operate in silos because if you refer them to a food bank, they may or may not have transportation to get there. And they may have many other needs. My hope and my vision for this is that we will be able to wrap around people and help them to get the services and the resources they need so that they can be successful in life. Those of us who are part of the health care world want to make sure that they have everything they need to manage their care and live healthy lives.
What will your network members be doing more of or differently to emerge stronger from the pandemic?
We learned that we are better together, and we are stronger together. I think COVID really brought us together even more closely than we had ever been. I think we built a lot of trust between our organizations to be able to tackle something like the pandemic, but it also helps us in just working day to day together. One of the things that we are always looking for is how do we bring those resources together. How do we find out where there are gaps? The referral database does have a very large analytic piece to it that we can see what the most sought-after resources are and what are resources that are sought after, but that there are no resources for. When we find a gap that we can say, together, we really need to develop this. Who can provide that service in our community? How can we make that happen?