Description

This paper explores the potential of hospitals to be such hubs by examining the experience of Washington Adventist Hospital (WAH), a community hospital in Maryland. The WAH experience highlights several challenges facing hospitals seeking to be community hubs. In this paper, the authors first describe Maryland’s unique health care financing system, which has helped encourage many of WAH’s innovations: Section I describes the various services and initiatives at WAH aimed at addressing the community’s broader determinants of health; Section II describes the research literature that undergirds WAH’s approach and describes how WAH collects data; and Section III explores the challenges WAH faces and recommends policy changes.