Integrating Services to Remove Barriers

As an Integrated Services Navigator and Recruiter at the Stephen and Sandra Sheller Eleventh Street Family Health Services, I have the responsibility of educating patients on the many services we offer that can help them lead a healthier life. These services range from nutrition education and physical fitness to meditation and creative art therapies. Our clinic has been a leader in integrated services and a month after I arrived, it more than doubled its capacity through expanding the primary care, dental care, and behavioral health departments and adding a new floor with a yoga studio, gym, music therapy room, dance/movement therapy studio, creative art therapy room, and meeting rooms for the health education classes. These combined services offer holistic health care to each patient, both treating and preventing disease and helping each patient take initiative in their own health. My role is to ensure patients from every department are taking full advantage of all the supportive services offered at our clinic.



My position is a new National Health Corps position and part of the position requires that I develop the resources that this role will then use in the future. One of the main tools is a new patient intake form that determines a patient’s interest in and possible benefits from our various services, from gauging patient's interest in improving their nutritional and physical activity to determining whether they could benefit from the creative art therapies or a diabetes self-management course. This form will be given to each patient at check-in within each department and I  am in charge of collecting the forms and giving the patients information regarding the programs along with connecting the patients with program coordinators. Currently, I am leading a trial run of this form within the primary care department, speaking with patients in the waiting room after they fill out the form and then making the proper referrals to the various coordinators using the Electronic Health Record.



As I go through the form with patients, I find that some patients utilize many of our services, while other patients are unaware of the services, but are interested in becoming more involved. Some may be interested in learning how to cook healthy foods in the Healthy Cooking Class and others may be interested in learning to reduce their stress through Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program and meditation and yoga. I have learned how important it is to make sure that every patient is informed of the many services available to them to ensure that they receive the support that can benefit their health.

Through these conversations, I have also seen the many barriers that prevent patients from taking full advantage of the services. Several patients have told me that, although they would love to attend these classes, their responsibilities at home prevent them from being able to attend. They need to care for their children or parents, they work until late at night, or their health conditions require too much attention for them to devote time to another commitment. One patient expressed interest in almost all of the services and explained to me how much she could benefit from the Stress Reduction Class because she was very overwhelmed by her responsibilities at home. She was in charge of caring for her elderly mother and also balancing a job and did not have the flexibility to consistently attend the classes. I explained the more flexible services available to her, such as an individual appointment with our Mind-Body instructor or nutritionists, the open gym hours, and the yoga and meditation classes that are offered every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

With patients like this woman, it is important to listen and understand the challenges within their scheduling and help them to determine how they can still utilize our services. Our Integrated Services Team’s hope is to extend classes to offer them at night so they are available to those people with more limited schedules. Speaking with these patients has shown me how important it is to not only provide resources to each patient, but to also speak with them and determine how they can make healthy changes to their lifestyle within their own limitations. No matter how much a patient may want to change their lifestyle, their responsibilities to take care of their family comes first and it is important to work with these patients to determine how they can fulfill their responsibilities and participate in services to create a healthier lifestyle simultaneously. Developing the skills to help patients utilize our services will not only allow me to better serve patients this year, but will help me to better serve the many with whom I plan to work in the future.
 

This blog post was written by NHC Philadelphia member Sonya Kowalczyk.
Sonya serves as an Integrated Services Navigator & Recruiter at FPCN - 11th Street.