Changing Lives—and Making Magic Happen—in the Rockaways

INSIDE PROVIDER SERVICES with David Rosales

Hello, and welcome to my Frontline column, “Inside Provider Services.” I’m excited to be sharing this column, which will focus on our Provider Services teams—Home Care (CHHA), Hospice, Behavioral Health, Personal Care and the CMO—and all the great work they’re doing.

So let’s get started!

Earlier this year, I was interviewed for our external newsletter, VNS Health Today. The very first question I was asked: “What would you say is VNS Health’s greatest strength as an organization?” 

I replied that I thought it was our ability to build trust with our patients and their families and to change the entire direction of their lives.  When we do that, I said, that’s where the magic happens.

I truly believe this. Our ability to build trust and change lives is why so many providers in the community turn to us to manage a patient’s care after that person has left the hospital. This strength is also a big reason why I came back to VNS Health in 2018, after having left the organization a few years earlier. 

And now, we’re about to launch an initiative in the Rockaways that will help change the direction of lives in a big way for our neighbors living on this remote peninsula in Queens.  

For those of you who may only know the Rockaways for its beaches that look out on the Atlantic Ocean, the Rockaways has long been beset with economic and health challenges—particularly Far Rockaway, the most populated part of the peninsula.

(See slideshow of the Rockaways here.)

Isolated geographically, the neighborhood has a large and growing number of seniors, and a significant percentage of its residents are living below the poverty line. The community also has high rates of mental health and substance use disorders and was hit hard by COVID-19 (not to mention Superstorm Sandy back in 2012). At the same time, many local health care facilities have closed in recent years, turning the area into a “health care desert” where health and wellness resources are limited and difficult to access.

Enter our Rockaway Strategic Action Group—a group of 22 team members drawn from across VNS Health. This group has but one goal: To develop a plan to address health care gaps in the Rockaways and then carry out that plan.

There’s a lot of opportunity here. We’ll be able to expand our Behavioral Health offerings and grow our Home Care, Hospice and Personal Care census in Far Rockaway and surrounding communities.

Our Health Plan is also an integral part of this initiative. Just recently, the Health Plans team opened a storefront location in Far Rockaway that’s being used to enroll Rockaway seniors into our Health Plans, and we anticipate it will eventually become a base for our Provider operations as well.

But the real opportunity is this: Our initiative will break siloes and allow team members from different parts of our organization (Home Care, Hospice, Behavioral Health, Personal Care, Health Plans)—including several who’ve lived and worked in the Rockaways for decades and know the neighborhoods intimately—to come together, talk with each other, collaborate, share ideas, and get on the same page on how we can best change the direction of lives in this underserved part of the city. 

Pretty exciting, right?

As Queens Home Care Branch Director Pearline Jackson, who’s part of the Rockway Strategic Action Group, so aptly put it, “We want to be the ROCKS of the Rockaways!”

I look forward to updating you on our exciting Rockaways initiative in future columns. In the meantime, thanks for letting me share this news. See you next month!

To read the first column from INSIDE HEALTH PLANS with John Burke, click here.