Carroll Nathan W, Hall Allyson G, Feldman Sue, Thirumalai Mohanraj, Wade Jamie Tinker, Rimmer James H
Department of Health Services Administration, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, United States.
School of Health Professions, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, United States.
Front Public Health. 2020 Apr 8;8:105. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2020.00105. eCollection 2020.
Pressure is increasing on not-for-profit hospitals to demonstrate that they provide sufficient benefit to the community to justify their tax-exempt status. Many industry observers have suggested that this community benefit should address unmet medical needs within the community, deficits in the social determinants of health, or health disparities within communities. We argue that one area of clear unmet need is assistance in helping bridge the transition that people with disabilities (PWD) must make from rehabilitation patient to wellness participant. Programs to bridge this transition are necessary because many PWD struggle to identify strategies to maintain and maximize their own well-being after discharge from the healthcare system. As a result, PWD have worse health outcomes than non-disabled individuals. To address these needs, we propose hospitals take a leading role in establishing new, community-based efforts to provide PWD with benefits that will support their effort to self-manage health. Hospitals are well-suited to lead the creation of these programs because of the important role they play in providing services to PWD and because of their ability to bring together multiple stakeholders required to make supportive programs sustainable.
非营利性医院面临着越来越大的压力，需要证明它们为社区提供了足够的益处，以证明其免税地位的合理性。许多行业观察家认为，这种社区福利应该解决社区内未满足的医疗需求、健康的社会决定因素方面的不足或社区内的健康差距。我们认为，一个明显未得到满足的需求领域是帮助残疾人从康复患者过渡到健康参与者的援助。建立这种过渡的项目是必要的，因为许多残疾人在从医疗保健系统出院后难以确定维持和最大化自身福祉的策略。因此，残疾人的健康结果比非残疾人更差。为满足这些需求，我们建议医院在建立新的、基于社区的努力中发挥主导作用，为残疾人提供福利，以支持他们自我管理健康的努力。医院非常适合领导创建这些项目，因为它们在为残疾人提供服务方面发挥着重要作用，并且能够汇聚使支持性项目可持续发展所需的多个利益相关者。
