Hospitals are committed to the communities they serve. Being part of the community is a key component in the vision and mission statements of Georgia ’s hospitals. Each hospital strives to improve the health of their communities by providing safe, efficient, effective, timely, equitable and patient-centered care.

Communities have traditionally trusted hospitals to provide high quality of care, education, and act as a resource for health, wellness, and prevention 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Recent national publicity regarding medical errors and perceived unfair billing practices has eroded that trust. Action must be taken now to rebuild confidence in hospitals and healthcare system. It is time to re-emphasize to our communities how we are pursuing our mission. We must share our stories with the people we serve! This requires helping our communities to better understand the health care delivery system, its financing structure, the hospital’s community benefits, and how we can all be good stewards of our limited health care resources.

Statewide Initiatives
The GHA Community Health Connections collaborates with partners and key stakeholders at the statewide and community level to facilitate hospitals in reaffirming and strengthening their role as a vital and valued community resource supported by the community and public. The vision of Community Health Connections is “ Georgia ’s health achieves the top quartile level of performance in the nation.” This will be driven by the mission: To aggressively promote and support practice change which improves the health and quality of life for all Georgians.”

Efforts are directed towards: 1) Expanding public’s knowledge regarding their hospital, health and healthcare issues and 2) Improving the health of the population served with a focus on increasing access and addressing health disparities.

Strategies
We are in an intense era of public scrutiny and concern about hospitals. Issues that are being questioned are: quality of care, billing and collection, charity care policies, governance, ethics, pricing and transparency. The public’s perception of hospitals’ level of community support has suffered.

A major emphasis of the Georgia Community Connection program is support and enhancement of the AHA Community Connection Program to adapt it to the needs of Georgia ’s Hospitals. The program incorporates community benefit principles to assist hospitals in reaffirming and strengthening their role as a vital and valued community resource supported by the community and public. The community benefit principles are:

Principle 1 – Emphasize disproportionate unmet health-related needs
Principle 2 – Emphasize primary prevention
Principle 3 – Build a seamless continuum of care
Principle 4 – Build community capacity
Principle 5 – Emphasize collaborative governance

The following plan outlines activities to ensure goals and objectives are met. Revision may be made as we move forward to assure that specific steps/strategies are tailored to accomplish our goals. Partners regularly communicate and seek opportunities to openly demonstrate our partnership and collaborations. It encompasses the work of various departments internally as well.

Community Health Connection has 2 main goals:
1. Expanding public’s knowledge regarding their hospital, health and healthcare issues.
2. Improving the health of the population served with a focus on increasing access and addressing health disparities.