Chesapeake, W.Va. (The Hinton News) – West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey announced $2.4 million to three organizations including Vandalia Health to connect employees of participating companies to timely primary and specialty care to identify chronic disease risk earlier and reduce avoidable health events.
The announcement was the first grant of the $199 million Rural Health Transformation Program which is transforming rural healthcare. Vandalia Health will receive $612,000 of the funds to establish a statewide network by integrating employer-based access points with Vandalia’s primary care locations, mobile clinical assets and telemedicine hubs.
Vandalia Health’s program is called Vandalia WorkWell Connect. The model is designed to identify chronic disease risk earlier, connect employees to timely primary and specialty care, support functional ability and work-status coordination, reduce avoidable health events, and generate standardized workforce and health outcome data for the State.
“Thank you to Governor Patrick Morrisey for investing in our efforts to address challenges of providing healthcare in rural areas,” said Jeff Sandene, President and CEO of Vandalia Health. “I’m very excited, because what we do every day is enhance the health of our communities and this is the first of many steps to make that happen.”
Vandalia WorkWell Connect will operate as a hub-and-spoke model. Participating employer worksites will serve as access points for preventive screening, chronic disease risk identification, occupational health navigation and care coordination.
The program will create new access capacity for employers and worksites that do not currently have equivalent services or where the proposed scope expands services to new locations, new populations or new non-duplicative functions.
