Urgent Wellness (UW) proposes to improve access to healthcare among residents of a DC Public Housing community by linking them to telehealth acute care and psychiatry providers from the Howard University Department of Family and Community Medicine and behavioral health providers from the McClendon Center (MC).
By implementing Community Wellness Navigators who staff telemedicine clinics and support medical group visits and by integrating acute care, preventive care and chronic disease management in convenient community settings, UW works to make acute care and behavioral health care more accessible to public housing residents, while ensuring that residents’ health literacy, preventive health and chronic disease health issues are addressed so that they do not have to turn to emergency rooms for non-urgent issues.
A UW Community Wellness Navigator will be available 24/7 to triage calls for physical health, emotional health, or social determinant issues using protocols developed by the Urgent Wellness team in collaboration with its partners. For each contact, the Community Health Worker will develop a care plan. Telehealth sessions for acute care, counseling, or psychiatric services will be scheduled promptly, with the goal of completing all telehealth visits within 24 hours.
In support of the project, Zane Networks will be responsible for setting up the telemedicine clinic, assessing providers’ telehealth readiness, conducting provider training, and supplying ongoing support. The project will employ Zane Networks’s HouseCall software, which facilitates e-visits and transmits secure emails between patient and provider. Providers can schedule, manage and conduct video consults and upload patient vitals, custom forms, and other information.
