FY2021 COMMUNITY BENEFIT REPORT The community benefit of a community hospital In 2008, as a not-for-profit organization, we were allowed to leverage our tax-exempt status to establish a Community Benefit Subcommittee (CBC) to further our social responsibility to the community. This committee is composed of community representatives, as well as hospital staff and members of our Board of Trustees. This committee distributes assistance to our community partners in the form of grant funding earmarked for improving community health and wellness. The CBC developed our community benefit program, believing that investing in our community benefits us all. Serving the needs of our community has never stopped at the hospital’s doors. We wholeheartedly believe that charity begins at home, and we still serve our community with the same passion and pioneer spirit that founded this hospital 114 years ago. Every three years, the CBC conducts a Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) to discover what our residents believe are the unmet priority health needs in Union County. This 2021 report is also based upon feedback from the hundreds of participants who completed and returned our last survey in 2018. Their concerns, and the objectives we developed to address them, are as follows: ● Your concern: Improve the health of the community by identifying, understanding and addressing social determinants of health. Our objective: Improve availability and ease of obtaining services to address social determinants of health. ● Your concern: Increase access to behavioral health resources. Our objective: Improve behavioral health by building community partnerships and supporting established programs. While we have worked on numerous projects and continued to develop various partnerships with other programs and agencies in Union County for the past three years, we are highlighting a few of the most recent ones in this report. They speak to the diversity of our programs, partnerships and reach. Community Benefit Subcommittee mission The Community Benefit Subcommittee, in support of Grande Ronde Hospital’s Mission and Vision, strives through collaborative efforts with other not-for-profit, community-focused organizations to identify and support the priority health needs of Union County, with an emphasis on the underserved. 2021 1907 —Continued on page 2
2 Support behavioral health education efforts such as mental health first aid, adverse childhood experiences and trauma information care In December 2020, we started the Innovative Strategies for Chronic Pain program and the Toolkit for Behavioral Health Management program. Both are designed to teach participants how to manage their conditions. In January 2020, we hosted Mental Health First Aid USA for adults in the community through a partnership with the National Council for Behavioral Health. Support Union County in developing a thorough understanding of currently available resources for social determinants of health and barriers to access GRH provided a community grant of $10,000 to the Northeast Oregon Regional Food Bank through Community Connection of Northeast Oregon restricted toward the purchase of a freezer/cooler for the new regional food bank. We also provided a community grant of $5,000 to the Friends of the Historic Union Community Hall to help establish the Catherine Creek Community Center in Union. Support community partnerships to provide developmental resources to children and their families The Union County Lactation Support program was started in July 2020 with community partners, including the Center for Human Development; the Babies First program; the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program; the Eastern Oregon Coordinated Care Organization; and the Northeast Oregon Network. GRH supported this program by creating a new position: We have a registered nurse certified in lactation consulting located in our Family Birthing Center. Our nurse sees both inpatients and outpatients for breastfeeding support, as well as a wide array of complications related to breastfeeding. —Continued from front page The community benefit of a community hospital Grande Ronde Hospital Community Benefit Report for the FYE April 30, 2021 ■ Direct charity care $ 1,599,190 Total charity care and means- $ 1,599,190 tested government programs ■ Community health improvement $ 773,986 ■ Health profession education $ 2,143,075 ■ Subsidized health services $ 200,248 ■ Cash and in-kind donations $ 54,960 to community groups Total other benefits $ 3,172,269 Total community benefits $ 4,771,459 Community benefits by category Note: All benefits are presented at cost. 16.2% 33.5% 1.2% 4.2% Support early intervention/youth behavioral health programs We provided a community donation/grant in the amount of $5,000 to Growing Community Roots (GCR) restricted toward the 2021 summer farm program for challenged youth in Union County. The target population for this program is at-risk youth ages 8 through 12. The GCR program is based on the principles of Trauma Informed Care, providing acceptance and safety to support the connections with nature and others that can heal trauma, as well as promote social, emotional and academic growth by building resilience. 44.9%
3 From our CBOAs I reflect on the past fiscal year, I am proud of the collective progress Grande Ronde Hospital and Clinics (GRH) and our community partners have made toward meeting the needs of our community. Resiliency, strength and hope come to mind as key terms describing this forward progress. We have shown resiliency in our pursuits to create the Eastern Oregon Community Resource Network (EOCRN). Simply put, the EOCRN is an online network that matches needs with resources in Union, Baker and Wallowa counties. The EOCRN is unique in that it has a backbone organization, Building Healthy Families in Wallowa County, coordinating this effort. We have shown strength in building our communities by meeting social determinants of health, including health care access and quality, social and community context, and neighborhood and built environments. A few examples include GRH’s robust financial assistance program to allow those who are uninsured and/or underinsured to receive necessary health care; a community grant to the Northeast Oregon Regional Food Bank to purchase a freezer/cooler to help decrease food insecurity; a community grant for the Historic Union Community Hall to create a community center in Union, Oregon, for gathering, education and socialization with others; and the creation of a behavioral health clinic with 13 providers. I am encouraged by hope for the future. GRH and our community have changed as a result of the pandemic. The pandemic highlighted both the strength of our work and the need for us to continue our efforts. I want to thank our staff and community partners for persevering during these crazy times. In the words of Dr. Seuss, “To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.” We would not be able to do this work without you. —Wendy Roberts Continued support of the CHARMS program Our CHARMS (Children and Recovering Mothers) program continues to thrive. The mission of CHARMS is to have healthy birth outcomes, which are more likely when women obtain prenatal care early during pregnancy, consistently complete their prenatal visits, receive medication-assisted therapy and participate in substance use counseling. CHARMS provides a recovery pathway that often begins in our Women’s and Children’s Clinic, in conjunction with our Family Birthing Center, while collaborating with the Center for Human Development, Babies First, addiction services and mental health services, Grande Ronde Recovery, GRH Behavioral Health, Oregon Department of Human Services, local law enforcement, Next Step Pregnancy, Community Connections of Northeast Oregon, Shelter from the Storm, Northeast Oregon Housing Authority, Narcotics Anonymous, Eastern Oregon Alcoholism Foundation, the Baker House Treatment Center, Healthy Families, Eastern Oregon Coordinated Care Organization Local Community Advisory Council, and the Greater Oregon Behavioral Health Initiative. At program completion, the goal of a CHARMS participant is to maintain sobriety throughout pregnancy, deliver a healthy baby, engage in a designated treatment plan, and discharge with their baby to a safe and healthy home environment. Making a difference— one family at a time For more than a decade, a small group from our local Department of Human Services (DHS) managed an anonymous email group led by Chris Evans, a Community Development Coordinator for the district that serves Union, Baker and Wallowa counties. He saw an opportunity to fulfill the unmet needs of various DHS program participants by reaching out to individuals via email. “We’d get requests—for example, maybe a crib or a child’s dresser. People in our community love to help their neighbors. So I started putting out an email request—here’s a kid who needs help,” he says. Filling a need The anonymous “Underground” email group was born. Evans would email out a request, someone from the group would fill the gap, and needs that otherwise would likely have gone unmet were taken care of. The Underground provided a safety net for many years, but Evans knew that while a —Continued on the back page
Our FISCALYEAR 2021 COMMUNITY BENEFIT REPORT is published as a community service of Grande Ronde Hospital, Inc., and the Community Benefit Subcommittee, 900 Sunset Drive, La Grande, OR 97850. Models may be used in photos and illustrations. 2022 © Coffey Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. Jeremy P. Davis, MHA President/CEO Wendy Roberts Senior Director of Administrative Services, Community Benefits Officer Mardi Ford Director of Communications & Marketing and Public Information Officer Grande Ronde Hospital 900 Sunset Drive La Grande, OR 97850 Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Walla Walla, WA Permit No. 44 The EOCRN provides an anonymous opportunity to serve the needs in our local community. If you’re interested in getting involved, visit eocrn.org to learn more. % of rates of filled requests Mattresses/bedding 56% Clothing 86% Housing 82% Medical 91% Transportation 50% Food 100% Misc 73% Pets 57% Employment 100% Household 75% lot of connections were being made, as the Underground grew the painstaking system of manually collecting information and items, seeking responses and connecting all the dots was cumbersome and potentially unsustainable. “Many of us were literally storing furniture in our offices,” he recalls. “I began shopping the concept of a community resource network. I talked about it to anyone who would listen to me.” By September 2020, the Eastern Oregon Community Resource Network (EOCRN) was born, with the active participation of representatives from GRH, the Eastern Oregon Coordinated Care Organization, the Greater Oregon Behavioral Health Initiative, Union County’s Local Community Advisory Council and MODA. The success of the program has exceeded all hopes. Building each other up The EOCRN is seeing unprecedented success, with an average 80% success rate in fulfilling unmet needs. Although similar programs like this have not been as successful in other parts of the country, Evans believes it works here in Eastern Oregon because our roots in an independent can-do attitude and pioneer spirit make us “built for it.” “The reason it has been so successful is that rural folks just love to help their neighbors,” he says. “We just have to put the need out there—here’s the gap, here’s the kid—and they step up. I get so excited because it really is the little things that we can help with before they turn into big things. I feel so privileged to be in this position, where we can help build each other up.” Making a difference—one family at a time —Continued from page 3
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