Lia Spiliotes, a senior partner in Cambridge Management Group, is interim CEO of Community Health Programs. She is a graduate of MIT's Sloane School of Management.
While COVID-19 continues to exacerbate social and medical inequities across the country, we and other centers have stretched to reconfigure services for those in need.
As the “social determinants of health” move into focus, we must reach beyond vital signs, the histories, the medication lists: We now ask patients about housing stability, transportation access, family relationships, caregiving challenges, friendships, food security.
"I mean you no harm; I am trying to understand my world and how to make it work. I might buzz or chirp. If I am on the higher end of the spectrum, I might amaze you with my knowledge of the planets, yet I cannot answer you when you ask me what I want for Christmas."
Community health centers, numbering nearly 1,300 in the 50 states and with decades of federal funding support, are the primary medical homes for more than 25 million people in 9,800 rural and urban communities in the U.S.
Now, as health care has become increasingly shaped by complex business demands, growing pains have forced a more challenging balance between medicine and finances.
