Healthcare Doesn’t Care
Participants said their healthcare clinics and hospitals don’t care about them. usually associate healthcare with angels. Especially Hispanics. All too often for use they are quite the opposite. Finding the right doctor. Navigating. Billing. Our appointment times are too short. Diagnoses? Treatment? Surgery? We get scared, confused, feel abandoned. And worst of all we are treated by doctors that act like they don’t care. Some of us, particulary Hispanics, turn to God, Jesus, Angels or the Virgen of Guadalupe to help, protect, and maybe even cure us. We pray for miracles. But many believe the role of Angels is to watch over us and keep us safe.
There is a deeply religious aspect that permeates Hispanic culture. As fear increases and hope erodes, their faith becomes a lifeline to get through hard and desparate times. They are comforted to know angels truly care and look after them. It’s their job. If only healthcare providers were as compassionate as the angels.
That says a lot, doesn’t it?
University of Miami Health System (UMHS) listened. They knew what it had to do. But knowing what to do is one thing. Knowing how to do it especially when a real solution seems impossible.
Participants said their healthcare clinics and hospitals don’t care about them. usually associate healthcare with angels. Especially Hispanics. All too often for use they are quite the opposite. Finding the right doctor. Navigating. Billing. Our appointment times are too short. Diagnoses? Treatment? Surgery? We get scared, confused, feel abandoned. And worst of all we are treated by doctors that act like they don’t care. Some of us, particulary Hispanics, turn to God, Jesus, Angels or the Virgen of Guadalupe to help, protect, and maybe even cure us. We pray for miracles. But many believe the role of Angels is to watch over us and keep us safe.
There is a deeply religious aspect that permeates Hispanic culture. As fear increases and hope erodes, their faith becomes a lifeline to get through hard and desparate times. They are comforted to know angels truly care and look after them. It’s their job. If only healthcare providers were as compassionate as the angels.
That says a lot, doesn’t it?
University of Miami Health System (UMHS) listened. They knew what it had to do. But knowing what to do is one thing. Knowing how to do it especially when a real solution seems impossible.
Well, that’s another story.
With HMHS You Are Never Alone
Through ethnographies and focus groups we learned:
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research helped the voices of these people come through loud and clear. Miami Dade County is 70% Hispanic and Black. Like many other parts of the country, they suffer the consequences of living in communities that are poorly served by healthcare. The prevalence of diabetes, cancer, pregnancy complications, serious eye conditions, high blood pressure, and heart disease far outnumbered those communities that are above the poverty line. Most of them struggle with access to health services due to where they live, transportation, difficulty navigating services, using health insurance, and more often than not, fear and distrust. Instead, they turn to family, friends, community and faith, for help and advice about a serious health problem.
For most of these people the story does not have a have a happy ending
The UMHS mission was to serve all people and that meant people who were not being given the attention they deserved. They vision transformed in to changing the ending to that story into a better one. And if they were serious about accomplishing that goal, UMHS it was imperative that transformation had to happen on numerous fronts.
The Problem
l.tHMHS needed to become a heaithcare system that …. .
Transformations most often begin with one simple question: What if?..UMHS asked that very questio.. Informed by those who had exoerienced.other ….. UMHS “what if” journey started with what if we became protectors. That meant a genuine transformation began with proving that they to these communities genuinely cared about them.
UMHS’s genuine priority was tofocus on those who were underserved and need them most. Marginalized communities. It was no act. HMHS really did care about margiaized commuities and would always be there for them through thick and thin.
UMHS wanted to eventually expand into serving Miami Dade county. Problem was those stuggled with affordable healthcare percieved UMHS as a private Healthcare systm. But by serving low income commumities with litte or no access to healthcare, UMHS woud be perceve as a “clinic for poor peope;” translation: UMHS was very good. was
to eventualy expand to include everyone no matter they established their reputation UMHS
UMHS began cementing their protecotr identity by kicking off a new campaign with the brilliant video, “What Sets Us Apart is Who We Bring Together”. Here were the angels that so many people yearned for in a healthcare system. But it was the way it included every scenario that they could personally relate to.
Calling All Angels
UMHS did not stop there. They knew they there was much more to be done for a real transformation to happen. UMHS continued to ask what if.
Mobil Clinics for Cancer, Vision, and Children
UMHS asked themselves “What if we flipped the way people are having to access healthcare. What if instead of them coming to us for exams, screening, treatment, and vaccines, we went to them? UMHS took to the streets with a Game Changer Vehicle Program. These amazingly well-equipped vans traveled throughout South Florida counties providing free cancer screenings to communities in need. Reaching an average of more than 40,000 people per year, Game Changer vans provided free cervical and colorectal cancer screenings, along with hepatitis C and STD/STI screenings. UMHS’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute’s Vision Van, a 40-foot mobile eye clinic, gave vision-saving eye screenings. The Miami Pediatric Mobile Clinic bus that was devoted to caring for local uninsured children by providing comprehensive medical services. To insure access, clinic bus parks near Miami-Dade public schools, houses
of worship, and community centers,mobile eye clinic, gave vision-saving eye screenings. And then there’s Miami Pediatric Mobile Clinic that was devoted to caring for local uninsured children by providing comprehensive medical services. To insure access, clinic buses parked near Miami-Dade public schools, houses of worship, and community centers,
Meaningful Community Involvement
What if UMHS could find a way to get people to start trusting them? What if they created a program called Shop Docs that operated through neighborhood barbershops to address health disparities? UMHS experimented the idea be creating Shop Docs. In doing so, UMHS was able to be seen as “one of us”. Shop Docs built the trust needed for underserved communities to believe in UMHS for key information, free screenings, and resources to educate and access important additional healthcare services.
Because for crucial to UMHS vision for it to continue, Shop Docs was run by University Student in order to instill in the next genereation this importance and duty to serve all who need health. UMHS’s Miller teaching hospital strongly encouraged students to become active in the community and now has a 98% student community involvement rate.
Health Insurance Access Partnership
1 in 3 Hispanics in Florida don’t have health insurance. Across the board people told stories about being turned away because they didn’t have health insurance. Those with seriously conditions were frightened. To make matters worse, providers offered no information to help them find organizations that would help them. Their only option was to treat themselves with home remedies, use over the counter medications, or buy bogus remedies. Sadly, their stories often included suffering and death. And so, UMHS came up with a solution to partner with Jackson Hospital to help uninsured Hispanics gain access to health insurance. What’s more the University of Miami Health System’s policy was revised to include providing emergent care and medically necessary care on a non-profit basis to patients without regard to race, creed, or ability to pay.
Taking the Pulse of Community Health
UMHS set health annual goals for Miami Dade communities and began monitoring the ongoing state of community health. What if their Annual Community Assessments Report allowed UMHS to identify ever shifting health needs, track progress, and respond accordingly. Available in English and Spanish it was publicly accessible online and became instrumental for helping health organizations understand how to better serve the community.
Website Reinvention
Another expression of how much (or little) a healthcare provider cared was through website usability particularly for Miami Dade’s Hispanic population. cross digital user behavior. UMHS redesigned their websites to make it easier to navigate, find the right doctor, and provide answers to important questions. An important notable discovery was how people used digital devices to gather health services information, which led to UMHS improving the cross functionality of desktop, tablet and mobile devices. Cross digital use was extremely important for how people found, accessed and acted on medical and health related information.
And They Lived Happily Ever After
n’A special alchemy emerged. between UMHS and the people it served. At every turn, UMHS continued to be seen as a genuinely caring, compassionate, and benevolent protector for all people in every community. That went double for those who had been woefully underserved “What Sets Us Apart Brings Us Together” pulled the tangible and intangible elements surrounding UMHS into an alchemy that led to the transformation of UMHS’s identity.
The secret sauce of the alchemy between UMHS and the people of Miami Dade was in the way that UMHS immersed themselves into the Hispanic community. It was this particular focus that translated into becoming integrated into the bedrock of countless neighborhoods and people began to see, feel, and take ownership of the change. They were no longer just surviving. They were thriving.
In the end, while UMHS transformed their identity, it was these previously underserved people who fostered the wonderous transformation of their own communities. Today, UMHS is recognized across the nation as the compassionate humanistic and model for how other healthcare providers can bridge the disparity of equal accesses to healthcare. delivered. By becoming an angel of healthcare, UMHS has seen — the number of — go from XX. to xx.
Alchemy can only be created by letting people steer. It gives people ownership of what is being created. When people experience the magic of creating something, that magic belongs to them. And when that happens, it’s nearly impossible to let it go.