Piedmont Healthcare and each of its hospitals are proud to extend their reach into the communities that depend on us for healthcare. We sponsor activities like free health screenings, which target areas with low-income, uninsured, underinsured and elderly populations.

“It’s important for Piedmont Healthcare and its hospitals to be out in the community as much as possible,” says Holly Lang, director of Community Benefits for Piedmont Healthcare, “not just so that we’re able to reconnect with our patients in a different setting, but also so that we can help them stay well, not just get well.”

In an acute-care setting, often, our staff treat an illness or a specific symptom. Community outreach events provide an opportunity to step back and look at someone as a complete person and address issues that may not be to an accelerated point yet, she says.

In addition, Piedmont Healthcare and each of its hospitals are conducting a community health needs assessment. We think it's a great idea that federal law requires one every three years.

“Traditionally, it’s been more of an informal process where we’ve just known what the community was looking for and just solicited feedback on what we were already doing,” Lang says. “This will be a much more systematic approach to see exactly what the identified health needs are and what the community members, and especially those that represent broader communities, think is a good solution.”

We use data, consumer surveying, focus groups and community member interviews to understand our communities and their needs better. Once we finish this process, we will establish several health priorities that we will address over the next three years and create an implementation plan to guide that work.

“We decide what programs we’re going to address by interacting with the community, seeing what the community needs, what they’re identifying as different health concerns they have,” Lang adds. “Each of our hospitals does a good job of being very proactive and engaged with the different members we want to work with and especially those that are most vulnerable – the elderly, those without insurance, those who don’t speak English well.”

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