UW Medicine Harborview Medical Center has delivered community care outside the hospital walls since it began operations last October. Caregivers target patients in the community who have struggled to make their appointments. Those patients frequently come from marginalized groups.
“I pull up, and there is [the patient] in front of the Jack in the Box,” Harborview Nurse Kate Smith told The Daily. “[The patient] came to my car, and I was able to get labs on [them], and we’re [going to] have a standing appointment now at Jack in the Box.”
Heart failure is an important service to bring into the community because effective treatment relies heavily on appropriate medications. If patients don’t have a steady home address or can’t make it to a pharmacy, they would otherwise be unable to get the care they need.
