Over the last year, PICO affiliate ACTION Network in Gainesville, Florida, has been working to ensure that residents of east Gainesville continue to have access to the health services they need after its primary community hospital closes.

Last November, ACTION Network brought together members of the community, city and county officials, and representatives from Shands HealthCare to raise community concerns about the hospital's closure.  Since then, Shands has partnered with Solantic - the operator of numerous urgent care centers in north central Florida - to open a new urgent care clinic in East Gainesville.  This urgent care center is the first of its kind to accept Medicaid, addressing a direct concern that ACTION raised when Shands announced the opening of the center (typically a clinic patient must pay with money or some form of insurance).  

On Monday November 9, ACTION leaders held another town hall meeting with Shands officials, including Susan Crowley, Associate VP for Community Affairs; Mitch Herbert, Director of Planning; and Nicole Yucht, Director of Public Relations, to discuss the hospital's charity care operations. 

At an initial meeting with the Shands charity care administrator, ACTION leaders were told that their charity care was "done on the back end," only after patients raised their inability to pay.  ACTION leaders lifted up testimonies from community from families burdened with medical debt, many in part because they did not understand options available to help them for receiving charity care.

At the town hall meeting with ACTION Network, Shands committed to increase transparency and to adopt a more proactive charity care policy, including: 

• Creating a written copy of charity care policy that is now posted on all Shands Health System hospital web sites.
• Implementing this policy in a more proactive manner, with patients receiving information for charity care and financial assistance on the front end. Every patient processing for a surgery or procedure at the hospital will now meet with a patient financial assistance representative.
• Shands Board of Directors gave their approval to a sliding scale as another option to help patients pay for their health care.
• Shands will assist patients in getting placed into programs such as CHOICES, the county health insurance plan for working uninsured residents.

Shands also agreed to keep the dialog open with ACTION Network, and to work with ACTION leaders in identifying additional health care needs in Gainesville and Alachua County.  Part of this includes participation in a county-wide health needs assessment, and partnering to help make recommendations after the survey results are compiled.  Shands agreed to meet back with ACTION Network in three to four months to report back.