Benefiting Our Community is Part of the Plan

“Southcoast hospitals have always made a substantial contribution to programs and services that improve and help maintain the health of residents in our region, particularly those facing barriers to good health care,” said Ellen Banach, Vice President of Strategic Services at Southcoast and head of the Community Benefits Program.

“The crisis we are now experiencing in health care has almost doubled the amount of free care we provide.”

Southcoast hospitals, in 2003, provided almost $13 million in direct care and programs that ranged from helping residents prevent heart disease to offering interpreter services and outreach to the many diverse ethnic groups in the region.

• The Cardiac Prevention Program served more than 1,400 people with screenings for cholesterol and other risk factors. To learn more about the risk factors that contribute to heart disease, log on to http://www.southcoast.org/heart/risks.html.
• Southcoast continued to collaborate with agencies that serve local youth to minimize health risk behaviors associated with adolescents.
• The Southcoast Mobile Health Services Van served more than 4,100 residents, offering free health screenings and immunizations.
• The Southcoast Patient Financial Services Department helped area families who do not have health insurance complete 7,000 free care applications and 1,500 MassHealth applications.
• Southcoast interpreters assisted some 10,000 individuals who speak a variety of languages, including Portuguese, Spanish, Khmer and Cape Verde Creole.
• The RAPPP (Responsible Attitudes toward Pregnancy, Parenting & Prevention) program continued to grow, providing education and other services to more than 1,600 youngsters — four times the number served just eight years ago. To learn more about RAPPP, log on to http://www.southcoast.org/rappp/.

Southcoast also offered a wide range of wellness and prevention screenings, including skin cancer screenings in Fall River and New Bedford and prostate screening programs that targeted high-risk populations such as African-American men. Southcoast also participated in a Massachusetts Department of Public Health Women’s Health Initiative to provide mammograms and Pap smears to women without health insurance.

“These programs were developed in response to research done on local health needs,” Banach said. “Our mission is to serve the very specific health needs of our communities, and our programming makes every effort to accomplish this.”

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