Griffin’s care model reaches beyond hospital
Griffin Hospital’s patient-driven care model has given birth to dozens of programs, many of which reach well beyond the hospital’s walls, providing still more reasons to benchmark this unusual facility.
This 160-bed hospital in Derby, CT, is a driving force in a communitywide wellness effort called Healthy Valley 2000. Much of its patient-driven care model ties to programs in the 2000 initiative.
Griffin’s strategic plan, adopted in September 1995, has as its premise that health is not just the "absence of disease but rather a state in which the body, mind, and spirit are integrated, aligned, and whole."
To create this state of health, the Griffin hospital system now has 30 initiatives under way. The following is a description of several:
• Valley Parish Nurse Program. This program now serves 20% of the community’s population in 13 parishes. Parish nurses function as health educators, gateways to the health and human services network, and counselors to parishioners.
• Mature Advantage Program. More than 8,900 community residents 55 years old and older participate in this free program that includes discounts, social activities, educational programs, and health screenings. The program also coordinates Lifeline, which provides a communications link for 218 at-risk persons.
• Community Corporate Cup. This is a six-year-old program that promotes companywide commitments to health, fitness, and wellness activities. Griffin is not only a sponsor but has been the trophy winner the past two years.
• Valley Volunteer Action Center. This program recruits and matches volunteers to meet the needs of non-profit agencies. The center organized the Week of Caring in September 1995, when 192 volunteers renovated the Valley Battered Women’s Shelter. In 1996, the center spearheaded an effort to renovate the community’s homeless shelter. Griffin’s director of volunteer services helped develop the center and continues as an advisor.
• Health Lifestyle Program. Griffin introduced the area’s first heart disease reversal program, based on the research of Dean Ornish, MD. More than 300 people have used the program, which was the only Connecticut program approved by Oxford Health Plan for reimbursement. Suburban Health Plan also covers the program, and Griffin provides scholarships to any patients not covered by insurance and unable to afford the program.
• Microworld Consortium. Griffin is one of 13 health care organizations from across the country working with The New England Hospital Assembly and Innovation Associates to identify key issues of community-based integrated care as well as the best approaches for addressing those issues. The aim is to create a computerized model to create strategies and manipulate the success factors facilitating the transition to capitation.
• Clinical Stress Management Program. In 1994, Griffin introduced a stress management program modeled after a nationally acclaimed program developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts. It’s one of 10 in the nation that addresses whole-person health needs using educational and behavioral interventions such as mindfulness-meditation to help individuals cope with stress, pain, and illness.
Griffin has committed space within its facility to be used solely as a meditation center, and it provides a daily meditation period for employees.
• School-based Health Center. Griffen Hospital is the lead agency and sponsor developing this model school-based health center at Ansonia High School. It is a partnership of eduction, public health and social service agencies. Emphasis is on social and mental health needs as well as primary care needs of school students in high-minority, low-income schools. The center opened in May 1996 and serves about 800 high school and middle school students.
• Griffin Hospital Primary Health Care Center. Griffin has expanded its medical clinic to a full-service primary health care center, more than doubling its capacity and providing service five-days-a-week . The center has a sliding fee scale, ensuring access by all community residents.
• Community-Focused Primary Care Residency Program. Griffin has committed to redesigning its internal medicine residency program from being internally focused to emphasizing community-based primary care.
Additionally, Griffin offers preventive medicine training in collaboration with The Center for Community Responsive Care of Boston. This collaboration will result in the first preventive medicine/internal medicine, four-year residency program in the country. The program will be community- and prevention-focused to address health needs identified by the Healthy Valley 2000 initiative.
• Health, Wellness, Fitness Center. Griffin is planning a health, wellness, and fitness center to open within the next two years that will merge fitness with a medical model/track, focusing on prevention and improving individual health status.
• Complementary Medicine Initiative. Griffin has sponsored a first-of-its-kind statewide meeting of alternative and complementary medicine practitioners. Thirty-four chiropractors, acupuncturists, homeopaths, naturopaths, and Oriental medicine practitioners attended; now they are developing criteria for addition to the HMO panel and payment for patient services.
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