Sunrise Community Health gets creative to serve patients. Those innovations might stick even after COVID-19.
Sunrise Community Health works to keep patients out of the emergency room. Photo by Kelly Ragan.
By Kelly Ragan
Sunrise Community Health has had one goal during the pandemic : Keep patients out of the emergency room.
That means serving people well while thinking up creative ways to do so safely, said Sunrise CEO Mitzi Moran in an interview with the NoCo Optimist.
“We don’t want anyone’s health care issues leading them to the emergency room,” Moran said.
Sunrise condensed its clinics down to the following in Greeley:
Monfort Family Clinic, 2930 11th Ave.
Monfort Children’s Clinic, 100 N. 11th Ave.
Sunrise Adelante Clinic, 1010 A St.
Sunrise Family Dental, 1006 A St.
Weld Prenatal Clinic, 1555 N 17th Ave.
Folks experiencing acute respiratory symptoms are encouraged to go to the Monfort Family Clinic.
But beyond the shift in service locations, Sunrise developed innovative ways to care for patients.
Telehealth
Telehealth has long been a subject of discussion at Sunrise, Moran said, but it had been challenging to get off the ground until now.
“We knew we wanted to move more into telehealth, but we couldn’t get reimbursed for that visit,” Moran said. “The state and CMS made an exception during COVID that we would get reimbursed for that.”
Patients and clinicians alike now embrace telehealth so well, Moran thinks it will be hard to go back to how things were before.
“Set COVID aside,” Moran said. “(Telehealth) is helping us reach patients we’ve had a hard time reaching before because of transportation issues or whatever the barrier might be.”
Pharmacy Grab-and Go
Since Sunrise established a grab-and-go pharmacy in response to COVID, it’s filled more than 30,000 scripts and served about 9,000 people, Moran said.
“We have people running medications out to you, so you don’t even have to come into the building,” Moran said.
It turns out people like the service. With or without COVID, some folks might prefer to wait in their cars for their scripts anyway. The trick, Moran said, is figuring out how to keep that service available.
Sunrise assigned dental health employees to help run prescriptions in an effort to keep them employed, as the clinic paused dental work to preserve personal protective equipment and prevent unnecessary exposure to the virus.
Sunrise laid off five positions on the dental team and eliminated open positions, Moran said.
Sunrise Community Health cut five positions on the dental health team and eliminated open positions amid COVID-19. Photo by Kelly Ragan.
When all was said and done, 33 positions remained, Moran said, and Sunrise deployed as many people as they could to help with a variety of services, such as urgent and emergent dental services, pharmacy refills, case management and more.
When the dental team gets back up to full speed, Moran said Sunrise will have to figure out another way to keep up the grab-and-go pharmacy service.
Curbside lab services
Perhaps the most surprising innovation to come from COVID-19 is curbside lab service.
People can pull up, text Sunrise, and someone will come out to do a finger stick through the car window.
The service might not work for every test, but the system works well for folks managing their diabetes and more.
“We never would have dreamed of doing labs curbside in the car before this,” Moran said. “That’s not something that was even on our radar screen.”
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Though restrictions have begun to relax, with the state of Colorado moving from “stay-at-home” to “safer-at-home” orders, and Weld County Commissioners announcing their “safer-at-work” initiative, Moran is still on edge.
Both the Weld County Department of Health and Environment and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment have highlighted a downward trajectory in cases over the course of 14 days as an important factor in considering whether to begin reopening.
Weld hasn’t seen that kind of reduction, despite the move to reopen.
“We have not had the 14 days, we haven’t even had three days,” Moran said. “We’ve asked people to do something so against human nature – isolate, stay away from your loved ones – if people have a little bit of gray area, they’re going to go.”
So, for now, Moran is watching the numbers, praying there won’t be a surge in COVID-19 cases. But if there is, she said, Sunrise has a plan.
In the event of a surge, Moran said, Sunrise plans to stand steady in the storm as a primary care provider.
“Just because COVID is here doesn’t mean your diabetes went away, or your heart failure is fixed, or you don’t need prenatal care, or your kids don’t need vaccines,” Moran said.