Just as often, it happens the other way around.

Sometimes FirstHealth identifies a potential source of funding and then looks for ways that the money might be used to improve some aspect of community health.

“We look at every grant opportunity to see if it could provide a needed program or service and if it is feasible for us to go for it,” says Barbara Bennett, administrative director of FirstHealth Community Health Services. “We pass up very few of those opportunities.” Last year alone, FirstHealth received nearly $1.9 million in grants to collaborate with community partners on outreach projects.

According to Charles Frock, FirstHealth’s chief executive officer, some community services are so important that FirstHealth will step up and provide them even if they don’t pay for themselves and no outside funding is available.

“That is something that for-profit health care systems typically don’t do,” he says.

They don’t write grant applications for other community service organizations either, but FirstHealth occasionally does.

FirstHealth delivered $4.7 million in direct community services last year and another $1.1 million in support of other not-forprofit community programs. All of that was on top of the $10.3 million in free care that the FirstHealth hospitals and Family Care Centers provided for indigent patients.

“If we did nothing more than provide that amount of charity care, I think our status as a not-for-profit would be very secure,” says John May, a former chairman of both the FirstHealth Board of Directors and the Moore Regional Hospital Board of Trustees.

“But we have chosen to give back to the community by doing so much more than that, investing in programs throughout our service area to help make people healthier.”
For example:

Health coverage for working people
Increasing the number of working people who have health care coverage is the goal of an insurance option called FirstPlan. It is available to businesses with 50 or fewer employees through FirstCarolinaCare Inc., FirstHealth’s managed-care plan.

Currently, employees of nearly 40 percent of the small businesses in Moore and surrounding counties do not have health insurance. In many cases, neither the workers nor their employers can afford it.

With FirstPlan, subsidies are available from FirstHealth and other outside sources to help low-wage employees pay their share of coverage. Employers who meet certain criteria can receive credits of up to 20 percent on their premiums.

Community Health Services helps fund the FirstPlan program.

According to Frock, FirstPlan can help small business owners solve one of their most worrisome problems.

“It enables them to do the right thing and feel good about it,” he says. “We also see it as a vehicle to improve the health status of our region. If we can provide more people with access to high-quality care and help them use it appropriately, then chances are good they will be healthier.”

Prescription drug assistance
A program called FirstHealth Cares helps people who can’t afford prescription drugs for certain chronic medical conditions to get the drugs at no cost.

A number of pharmaceutical companies provide free drugs to people who don’t have insurance or the means to pay. But many people don’t know that or, if they do, they don’t know how to apply.

Since January 2004, FirstHealth Cares has processed more than 13,000 requests for new prescriptions and refills at a cost savings to patients of more than $2.5 million. Funding for the FirstHealth Cares program has come from grants from the FirstHealth Montgomery Foundation, the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust and the North Carolina Health and Wellness Trust Fund.

“Most patients who come to us would not be able to obtain their medication otherwise,” says pharmacist Julie Vargas, Pharm.D., manager of FirstHealth Cares, “so some of them would end up in the emergency room with heart failure or a diabetic crisis.”

Telehealth monitoring for distance health care oversight

Telehealth
FirstHealth and Moore Regional Hospital Foundation agreed to share the $130,000 cost of equipment for a telehealth system that monitors patients with chronic health conditions such as congestive heart failure and wounds. High-resolution digital cameras and small, easy-to-use computers are used to send data from the patient’s home over a simple phone line to a Central Monitoring Station for the

Home Health nurse’s review. The equipment measures temperature, pulse, blood pressure, blood glucose, blood oxygen levels, weight and other vital information. Potential problems can be detected quickly, allowing physicians and nurses to respond.

As a result, fewer patients have to be admitted to the hospital or sent to the emergency room.

“It enables us to provide better care for more patients,” says Patricia Upham, director of FirstHealth Home Health. “Patients and their caregivers love it, because they feel they are getting a higher level of care, and they are.”

Community heart and diabetes programs
Two programs supported by Moore Regional Hospital Foundation—the Community Heart Failure Program and the Community Diabetes Program—help manage chronic diseases and prevent complications. That helps prevent hospital readmissions.

Both programs also help low-income patients get the medicines they need to manage their disease, and the diabetes program helps patients buy blood-sugar testing supplies.

“I’ve had several patients who have cried, because they were so happy that somebody cared, that somebody was willing to help them,” says Jeany Copley, R.N., coordinator of the Community Diabetes Program.

It is estimated that since the diabetes and heart failure programs began four years ago, they have helped patients avoid more than 1,300 hospital admissions and Emergency Department visits.

Grants from the hospital foundation pay for patients’ medicines and supplies. Moore Regional provides the staff.

Mobile Health Services for off-site health screenings

Mobile Health screenings
One of the oldest and most visible of FirstHealth’s community outreach programs is Mobile Health Services, which provides below-cost health screenings for

people in Moore, Montgomery, Richmond and Hoke counties. On any given day, the Mobile Health van can be seen at a factory, church or grocery store parking lot. Screenings are offered for breast cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure and osteoporosis.

About 2,000 people a year take advantage of these Mobile Health screenings, which, quite literally, save lives.

“We tend to find a lot of people with uncontrolled hypertension,” says Amy Hamilton, outreach manager with FirstHealth Community Health Services. “Some of them aren’t aware they have hypertension at all.”

More and more, Hamilton says, the Mobile Health screenings are finding people with high blood sugar levels.

“If it is very high, we try to get them an appointment with their physician that day,” she says. “We have also sent a few people to the emergency room, because their glucose level was so high.”

Mobile Health screenings frequently detect cases of borderline hypertension, high blood sugar or high cholesterol.

“We advise those people to talk to their doctor and to think about modifying their diet or getting more exercise,” Hamilton says. “If we can help prevent even a few people from developing one of these serious diseases, then we have made a huge difference.”

Richmond Wellness Day
The annual Wellness Day at Richmond Memorial Hospital is something of a misnomer. This “day” actually starts a couple of weeks before the big event the second Saturday in October.

People in the community can come to the hospital ahead of time to have their blood drawn for various tests or to have an EKG or pulmonary function test. Then, when they come to Wellness Day, they can pick up the results of their screenings while physicians are on hand to discuss the results with them.

“A lot of people talk with a physician while they are here to find out if there is anything they should be concerned about and need to follow up on with their own physician,” says Nancy Caulder, R.N., the clinical practice coordinator at Richmond Memorial who organizes Wellness Day.

Usually, about 900 people come to the hospital to get their blood drawn or have other tests done in advance. Another 200 to 300 have the tests done at Wellness Day and then get the results later.

The hospital charges fees for the tests that are lower than those typically charged by physicians’ offices or even by the hospital outside of Wellness Day.

Caulder knows first hand how important the Wellness Day screenings can be. A few years ago, she brought her father to the event, and his blood test showed that his potassium level was dangerously low.

“We might not have caught it if he hadn’t come to Wellness Day, and it could have been deadly,” Caulder says.

MooreCAP
For the past three years, special Resource Centers in Southern Pines, Carthage and Robbins have helped connect people who are uninsured or have special needs with community services that can help them. The Resource Centers are the cornerstones of MooreCAP (Community Access Program), an initiative of MooreHealth, which is the local Healthy Carolinians Task Force.

FirstHealth is a major MooreHealth participant.

The MooreCAP Resource Centers have directed people to prescription drug assistance programs, helped non-English speakers understand medical information, and helped people apply for Medicaid, Food Stamps and health insurance for their children.

And more
Throughout the year, FirstHealth of the Carolinas either sponsors or helps sponsor a variety of programs that target special populations.

Pregnancy Fairs for new and expectant parents

• Twice a year, in the spring and fall, the Women & Children’s Services department of Moore Regional Hospital sponsors a pregnancy fair for new and expectant parents. Always present are experts on prenatal care, pediatrics, childbirth, mother-baby care, neonatal services, breastfeeding and other topics who are available to answer questions. The Women & Children’s Services department at Richmond Memorial Hospital hosts a similar event every August, and FirstHealth is a major sponsor of an annual community pregnancy fair in Montgomery County.

• Both Moore Regional Hospital and Richmond Memorial Hospital provide childbirth preparation classes at no charge to expectant parents. (See related information here.)

• Every June, health care professionals who provide cancer care at Moore Regional’s Community Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center organize and host a local National Cancer Survivors Day event. Cancer survivors and their families and friends are invited to join cancer caregivers in a celebration of cancer survival. Participation in the event has grown so over the past several years that it has been moved off the hospital campus and to The Fair Barn, a large event venue in the Village of Pinehurst.

• The annual Clarke Neonatal Intensive Care Reunion celebrates the lives of Moore Regional’s tiniest patients. (See the related story here.)

• Sixteen support groups, from Breastfeeding to Bariatric, meet monthly at Moore Regional Hospital, and Richmond Memorial Hospital hosts monthly meetings of the Susan Sharpe Cancer Support Group. (A list of these groups, their meeting dates and times can be found here.)

Helping others succeed
FirstHealth provides meeting space, administrative assistance and other types of support for a variety of community-based, not-for-profit organizations.

“We will consider almost any request,” Frock says. “It could be providing a facilitator for a retreat or giving them access to our experts in areas such as information technology, human resources or education.

“We realize that we have a lot of resources, and sharing them is another way we can give back to the community.”

For more information on any of these programs, please call (800) 213-3284.