The Yours, Mine, and Ours — Public Health series highlights how our state's public health agencies keep us healthy, safe, and informed about issues impacting physical and mental health in our communities, homes, workplaces, and schools. The series is made possible with funding from the Michigan Association for Local Public Health.

Hospitals work hand in hand with public health to help build healthier communities.
Michigan's hospitals have a long history of collaborating with local, state, and federal public health agencies and programs. Yours, Mine and Ours — Public Health spoke with Lauren LaPine, Michigan Health and Hospital Association senior director of legislative and public policy, about how those collaborations benefit Michigan's communities and residents today. 

“My background is in public health, so I always like talking about this,” LaPine says. “If you have a well-functioning public health system, you won't have as many patients that are sick that are coming to the hospital. When those two kinds of systems can partner together, we ultimately will have healthier communities.”

Here’s what else LaPine had to share.

Lauren LaPineQ. How do Michigan's hospitals collaborate with county health departments?

A. November of 2021, the MHA convened our first public health taskforce, coming out of the COVID 19 pandemic. We wanted to be able to look back at how hospitals and health systems partnered with local health departments and identify the things that worked really well during that pandemic response and potential opportunities for improvement. At the time, it was intended to be a one-year taskforce, a retrospective look and to make recommendations for how we could more effectively partner in the future for another public health emergency. That task force continues to meet because we learned that we have a lot of opportunity for growth and improvement in this area.

We brought together local health officers from health departments, hospital executives and CEOs, as well as infectious disease physicians from across the state and local health department medical directors. We did come up with a set of 10 recommendations for how local health departments and hospitals could more effectively collaborate. We talked about the need for more effective communication between local health officers and their local hospitals and health systems, the need for better data sharing between health departments and hospitals, and the need to improve communication in terms of how we talk about the importance of public health.

On a more granular level, hospitals and local health departments collaborate in the community health needs assessment process. Nonprofit hospitals are required at the federal level to complete a community health needs assessment. Just last year, Michigan hospitals invested $784 million in community based and voluntary activities. And that investment is informed by what's identified in the community health needs assessments.

Q. How do Michigan's hospitals collaborate with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services?

A. Michigan hospitals collaborate with the Department of Health and Human Services on a daily basis for a variety of reasons, mostly framed around protecting communities’ public health. We partner very actively on efforts around emergency preparedness. And we've been doing a lot of collaboration with MDHHS on efforts surrounding maternal and infant health. We partner very actively on newborn screenings and programs around breastfeeding and mother-baby support, before and after a mom delivers a baby in a hospital.

We're also very active in terms of collecting and reporting health data with MDHHS. Our hospitals collect a massive amount of data from patients that are seeking care. We share that data to ensure that we have effective public health surveillance and tracking across the state.

The other area, behavioral health, is one of four strategic pillars for the MHA. We are involved very closely with MDHHS on statewide work to build out the care continuum for behavioral health services across the state to meet the significant influx in need that we've seen coming out of the COVID 19 pandemic. Our hospitals are active partners with MDHHS as they stand up crisis stabilization units across the state and as they continue to add additional provider types like psychiatric residential treatment facilities and certified community behavioral health clinics.

Hospitals and health systems can play a role in making sure that patients get access to behavioral health services where and when they need it. We worked with MDHHS to secure $50 million to distribute to six hospitals and health systems across the state for expanding access to pediatric inpatient psychiatric care.

Q. How do hospitals help patients connect with federal public health programs like Medicaid and Medicare?

A. The MHA and hospitals and health systems have been working really closely with MDHHS and local health departments to make sure that when a patient presents in the emergency department or to a hospital for some type of treatment, if they do not have insurance, that hospital actively works with them to ensure that they are able to get access to enroll in some type of coverage.

Q. How do public health services and resources help patients continue their wellness journey after a hospitalization?

A. A number of our hospitals across the state are actively partnering with their local health departments in the Michigan Home Visiting Initiative that's run out of MDHHS for Medicaid beneficiaries that have just had a new baby. The model is designed for new mothers to ensure that the mom and baby are making the necessary clinical connections to sustain care in the months leading up to and after the birth.

Another good example of how hospitals and local health departments partner in providing care after discharge in the behavioral health space, a number of hospitals employ peer recovery coaches in the emergency department setting. When a patient is facing some level of substance use disorder, they're directly connected with someone that has also experienced substance use disorder in the past and can walk alongside them as they get connected to treatment.   

Q. How does the public health system work with hospitals to meet the community's health needs?

A. Public health and hospitals working in tandem really protects and promotes community health. Public health focuses on prevention while hospitals focus on health intervention. Over the last couple of years, as the reimbursement for community health workers expanded, those individuals have been critical in bridging the gap between what happens in the four walls of a hospital and when a patient is discharged and goes back home into the community.

Estelle Slootmaker spends most workdays as a journalist and book editor. She also writes poetry and has two books underway: her great great grandmother’s memoir of childhood on Mackinac Island and a children's picture book. You can contact her at [email protected].  

Photos courtesy Michigan Health and Hospital Association.
Lead photo by Jsme Mila via Pexels.com.

The Yours, Mine, and Ours — Public Health series highlights how our state's public health agencies keep us healthy, safe, and informed about issues impacting physical and mental health in our communities, homes, workplaces, and schools. The series is made possible with funding from the Michigan Association for Local Public Health.