As a social worker on the Internal Medicine service, John Schafhauser, MSW, often works with community health workers (CHWs) from Penn Medicine’s IMPaCT program who help support patients from local communities who may be at high risk for readmission once discharged.
Working together on the patient-care units, Schafhauser has built a good relationship with the CHWs — through interactions as well as an opportunity to shadow them on the floor to learn more about what they do. “They are such good people,” he said. “They’d give you the shirt off their backs.” And he wanted to do something for them. So he applied for — and received — a Penn Medicine CAREs grant to help them purchase the small items they sometimes use to help build a rapport with patients they identify as high risk — such as markers or coloring books or puzzles. “These little displays of humanity help to normalize a place that can seem sterile and dehumanizing.”
But, said Justin Chisholm, IMPaCT project manager, CHW purchases are sometimes more essential … and time sensitive, for example, having food at home or even clothes to wear when patients are discharged from the hospital. The CAREs grant has already been put to good use when one patient was being transferred directly to a skilled nursing facility but had no one to bring her spare clothes and undergarments in time. Thanks to the grant, the CHW was able to buy the patient the necessary items for her discharge. “The CAREs grant allows us to move quickly and get what the patient needs when it’s needed,” Chisholm said.
This easy access also came in handy when a patient was discharged to her son’s house in Malvern, an area outside of the IMPaCT care radius in West Philadelphia. “We couldn’t get in contact with her son and we had concerns,” Chisholm said. “In our communities, we’d just do a pop-up check out.” But, because all CHWs live in the local communities of their patients, “getting out to Malvern on public transportation would be hard.” Instead, part of the grant funded two Lyft rides for the CHW to do a face-to-face wellness check and connect the patient with a primary care physician in the Malvern area, where she now lives.
Schafhauser is thrilled that the grant is doing so much to help. “CHWs are like guardian angels for their patients,” he said. “I wanted to do something to say thank you and show them how much gratitude I have for what they do.”