�ݺ�ߣ

Editor's Notes

• #2: SLIDE 1: Good morning, I am Michelle Elliott from the University of Georgia’s Archway Partnership. My colleague, Sam Perren, and I are honored to have the opportunity to share some of Archway’s work in partnership with Taylor Regional Hospital in Hawkinsville, GA .
• #3: SLIDE 2 PROBLEM: Since 2010, at least 84 rural hospitals in 26 states, including 6 in Georgia, have closed. In 2015, Taylor Regional Hospital in Hawkinsville, Georgia was literally days from running out of money and potentially facing a similar fate. The ER was over-run and patients who had the means to do so often left the county to get urgent medical care. To compound matters, new federal laws required the Hospital to conduct a community-wide needs assessment that could cost tens of thousands of dollars, or risk losing their non-profit status, sealing the Hospital’s fate.
• #4: SLIDE 3: This slide pictures the now closed Stewart-Webster Hospital in Richland GA, but it could have been us. This picture is taken just about 80 miles from Hawkinsville, but their stories turned out very differently. This rural hospital closed in 2013. Residents must now travel over 30 miles to get to the nearest hospital. This has been a common trend in American healthcare.
• #5: SLIDE 5: Solution Map of Georgia highlighting Hawkinsville and UGA So, how does a community 3 hours from the UGA campus build and nurture a relationship designed to address critical issues, like healthcare, and looming pressures, like this needs assessment, and then collaborate to develop an effective strategy? As the state’s land-grant institution, University of Georgia’s Public Service and Outreach office thought they could do more to connect with Georgians on a deeper level. Since beginning in 2005 with just one community, the Archway Partnership has served 13 Georgia counties. The example today of the UGA Archway Partnership’s work in conducting the 2016 community health needs assessment with Taylor Regional Hospital in Hawkinsville, Georgia tells the story about a relationship that connects campus and community in ways that go beyond what is normally seen and demonstrates the impact of this collaboration on all parties involved.
• #6: SLIDE 6:Working with Public Service Faculty, Archway communities approach economic development holistically and work collaboratively to find solutions to challenges like rural health care.
• #7: SLIDE 8: (Archway Model/ work group) How solution is unique or differentiated The Archway Partnership was intentionally designed to shrink the distance between campus and community through collaboration and sustained interaction over years, not months. The Archway Partnership is unique in the depth of the relationship between partners that is created, breaking down traditional community-university barriers and developing an effective working model that produces tangible impact routinely. Community partners such as cities, counties, school boards and others join together to share part of the funding for the Partnership. The University commits additional financial resources and agrees to place a full time faculty member, called an Archway Professional, in the community for the duration of the Partnership. Through a series of public input sessions, community members work with Public Service and Outreach faculty to identify critical needs to work on together. Grass roots “issue work groups” then meet regularly with the Archway Professional to generate a work plan unique to their community. Students, faculty and citizens work together The diagram?on the left shows a simplified version of the Archway model- with the Archway Professional facilitating a group of stakeholders and decision-makers, called the Executive Committee that serve as a kind of “Board of Directors” locally to ensure that University resources continue to focus on the issues deemed most important by the community. The exterior circle of people is the Issue Work Group, a group of local citizens focused on a single issue- such as health. This group also meets with the Archway professional to develop a work plan and identify opportunities to involve UGA faculty and students in addressing the issue.
• #8: SLIDE 9 : At the same time, campus-based Archway faculty build relationships with the university’s schools and colleges to provide opportunities for students to conduct community-based research and experiential learning within Archway Partnership communities across the state. In this case, faculty and doctoral students from the College of Public Health worked with the Hospital and the Archway work group over several months to conduct the Community Health Needs Assessment providing research and analysis of secondary data, surveys, and focus groups.
• #9: �ݺ�ߣ 11: The information collected during the assessment identified the need for an urgent care center in the community. Taylor Express Care opened as an urgent care on the hospital’s campus later that year and has dramatically improved patient services and the outlook for the hospital in the future.
• #10: �ݺ�ߣ 12: Benefits to the community Taylor Express Care now serves on average 18 patients a day AND has resulted in a 10 percent reduction in emergency room usage. Pulaski County residents now have routine health care close to home and the hospital ER is more efficient. As a result more patients choose to “stay home” for their health care and the hospital’s financial outlook has improved. A conservative estimate of the value of UGA resources in this assessment is over $55,000.
• #11: �ݺ�ߣ 13: These efforts are truly reciprocal- UGA students and faculty benefit from the experience in a number of ways- increased opportunities for research in rural communities, experiential learning for students, peer reviewed publications and service to the state.
• #12: Graphic display for slide 15