At Tuesday night’s educational event, Finding Life, Health and Wholeness in a Tough Southern Town, seven community panelists and two presenters from Wake Forest Baptist Health—Lexington Medical Center in conjunction with the LMC’s Bio-Ethics Committee, spoke to a room of more than 200 people about the possibility of a covenant between community church organizations and the hospitals to move Lexington toward a healthier environment.
The panelists were Newell Clark, City of Lexington mayor, Dot Landis, former parish nurse with LMC, Sherraine McLean, chair of the Lexington city school board, Chuck Miller, former LMC board chair, Herb Miller, senior minster of The First Baptist Church on Village Drive, Steve Snelgrove, president of LMC and Ed Timberlake, Lexington pediatrician.
The Rev. Dr. Gary Gunderson, vice president of faith and health ministries of Wake Forest Baptist Health, said the hospital was pursuing this partnership to blend the intelligence of the hospital with the intelligence of the faith community to make lives better.
Gunderson worked in the Memphis hospitals with this model. After a time, data was compiled and Gunderson found that the partnership provided concrete numbers showing the benefit of the relationship.
“This turned out to be smart business decision. We were able to track data over five-year period of time. We had 4,000 patients that had come through the hospital from congregational partnerships and we were able compare the data to the universe of other patients in hospital based on age, sex, race and diagnosis. The patients who came through the connected congregations had half the raw mortality rate. They also stayed out of hospital 39 percent longer after first episode of treatment,” Gunderson said.
Based on the Memphis model, hospital staff will ask the participating churches to use the power of the pulpit to promote preventative health care and put people in place to guide the individuals who need care. The churches will each have a liaison who works with navigators at the hospital. By the time Gunderson left Memphis, there were 11 navigator positions within the hospital network.
But the underlying reason for the partnership has to do with the state of the community. The Rev. Dr. Fred Smith, professor of Urban Ministry at Wesley Theological Seminary in Wash. D.C., said many health-related issues have to do with what is happening in the community, whether affected by the environment or affected by the financial happenings.
“When people talk about health, they aren’t just talking about what happens in clinic. Health has very much to do with where you live. Health has to do with the leaving of the furniture companies; health has to do with level of education; and health has to do with the condition of the house you live in. Social situations determine the state of your health,” Smith said.
Panelist Herb Miller asked Gunderson and Smith if they could give a direct example of a patient who was affected by the partnership within the Memphis hospital.
There was a man in a congregation who had been in the hospital eight times in one year. When the partnership between the hospital and churches came to be, one of the church liaisons helped with organizing medication, checking for expired food products in the refrigerator and was a part of getting the patient to follow up doctor’s appointments on time. They were simple acts, Gunderson said, but they made a big difference. After the liaison’s assistance, the man only went into the hospital two times the next year and when Gunderson left Memphis, the man hadn’t been to the hospital that year.
