Addressing community health with medical fitness
Published by HealthFitness on September 18th, 2024
A major part of the main directive for every health system is to provide the absolute best care possible for patients who face acute issues or chronic challenges. While that's paramount as a healthcare mission, what if you could also boost prevention efforts so that your entire community saw greater health as a result? That's where your medical fitness center can play a vital role. Here are some other key questions to keep in mind as you build your medical fitness resources in a sustainable, community-focused way.
What is community health?
According to the American Hospital Association (AHA), community health refers to non-clinical approaches for improving health and preventing disease by addressing social, behavioral, environmental, economic, and medical determinants of health within a geographically defined population.
In its resources on how hospitals can address various social determinants of health, the AHA notes that promoting healthy behaviors can make a substantial impact in improving patient and community health outcomes. The organization adds that helping individuals to sustain positive health behaviors can be a significant part of offering patient-centered care.
How does a medical fitness center help community health?
Due to its name, a medical fitness center is often considered to be only an on-campus gym, similar to other workout options in a local area. Having those exercise choices is a large part of a fitness center, but that's far from the only advantage this type of center can offer.
Most notably, a medical fitness center can draw on a health center's range of professionals for education and counseling on a breadth of topics, including nutrition, smoking cessation, stress reduction, habit formation, weight loss and maintenance, cardiovascular health, cancer prevention, diabetes management and more.
These are not silos; one type of expertise can inform another and create a tailored mix of insight that helps an individual first, then ripples out to more people in the community. For example, someone who has diabetes can learn about nutrition, physical activity, and stress relief and then share that info with friends and family members who also begin to implement those healthy strategies. That will benefit the patient with diabetes while also potentially preventing the development of diabetes within that circle of connections.
What benefits does a healthcare system see with a medical fitness center?
Because of the ripple effect, it's impossible to gauge how much reach a medical fitness center can actually have within a community, because you can't count how many people don't develop a chronic condition due to better habits.
But you can see a shift to some degree with health markers like lower readmission rates, reduced smoking levels, less need for chronic care in both adults and children, and even changes in the demand for mental health services.
A stronger, healthier community puts less strain on a healthcare system, allowing it to staff at effective levels and offer more preventive care overall, rather than always scrambling to keep up with a deluge of acute and chronic care appointments.
How can a medical fitness center be optimized for community health?
Simply having a medical fitness center available isn't enough to prompt the kind of advantages that come from a comprehensive approach. For example, if your health system uses the fitness center only as a place for physical therapists to work with patients, or you offer memberships to the community but do nothing to promote its benefits, it's possible your center is squandering its potential reach.
In order to contribute to community health in a meaningful way, a medical fitness center must be financially thriving — not just stable and certainly not losing money every month — as well as staffed with professionals, focused on growth, and managed efficiently. Sometimes, health systems may not have the resources to turn a medical fitness center into a powerhouse for community health efforts and long-term and there's also uncertainty about what steps to take next. The good news is that not every strategy pivot needs to be developed in-house.
At HealthFitness, we have significant experience in creating efficiencies and ensuring that these centers are run as effectively as possible. Although every center and every community has distinctive needs, knowing the type of difficulties that other centers have faced, and guiding them toward hitting successful goals, has positioned us as a leader in community health efforts. Most of all, having an experienced partner can help you see service gaps and opportunities that can turn your medical fitness center into more than a shared space — it can become a true community health driver.
Learn more
Contact us to learn more about our medical fitness solutions.
What is community health?
According to the American Hospital Association (AHA), community health refers to non-clinical approaches for improving health and preventing disease by addressing social, behavioral, environmental, economic, and medical determinants of health within a geographically defined population.
In its resources on how hospitals can address various social determinants of health, the AHA notes that promoting healthy behaviors can make a substantial impact in improving patient and community health outcomes. The organization adds that helping individuals to sustain positive health behaviors can be a significant part of offering patient-centered care.
How does a medical fitness center help community health?
Due to its name, a medical fitness center is often considered to be only an on-campus gym, similar to other workout options in a local area. Having those exercise choices is a large part of a fitness center, but that's far from the only advantage this type of center can offer.
Most notably, a medical fitness center can draw on a health center's range of professionals for education and counseling on a breadth of topics, including nutrition, smoking cessation, stress reduction, habit formation, weight loss and maintenance, cardiovascular health, cancer prevention, diabetes management and more.
These are not silos; one type of expertise can inform another and create a tailored mix of insight that helps an individual first, then ripples out to more people in the community. For example, someone who has diabetes can learn about nutrition, physical activity, and stress relief and then share that info with friends and family members who also begin to implement those healthy strategies. That will benefit the patient with diabetes while also potentially preventing the development of diabetes within that circle of connections.
What benefits does a healthcare system see with a medical fitness center?
Because of the ripple effect, it's impossible to gauge how much reach a medical fitness center can actually have within a community, because you can't count how many people don't develop a chronic condition due to better habits.
But you can see a shift to some degree with health markers like lower readmission rates, reduced smoking levels, less need for chronic care in both adults and children, and even changes in the demand for mental health services.
A stronger, healthier community puts less strain on a healthcare system, allowing it to staff at effective levels and offer more preventive care overall, rather than always scrambling to keep up with a deluge of acute and chronic care appointments.
How can a medical fitness center be optimized for community health?
Simply having a medical fitness center available isn't enough to prompt the kind of advantages that come from a comprehensive approach. For example, if your health system uses the fitness center only as a place for physical therapists to work with patients, or you offer memberships to the community but do nothing to promote its benefits, it's possible your center is squandering its potential reach.
In order to contribute to community health in a meaningful way, a medical fitness center must be financially thriving — not just stable and certainly not losing money every month — as well as staffed with professionals, focused on growth, and managed efficiently. Sometimes, health systems may not have the resources to turn a medical fitness center into a powerhouse for community health efforts and long-term and there's also uncertainty about what steps to take next. The good news is that not every strategy pivot needs to be developed in-house.
At HealthFitness, we have significant experience in creating efficiencies and ensuring that these centers are run as effectively as possible. Although every center and every community has distinctive needs, knowing the type of difficulties that other centers have faced, and guiding them toward hitting successful goals, has positioned us as a leader in community health efforts. Most of all, having an experienced partner can help you see service gaps and opportunities that can turn your medical fitness center into more than a shared space — it can become a true community health driver.
Learn more
Contact us to learn more about our medical fitness solutions.
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HealthFitness is a proven leader in providing fitness solutions that engage and connect people both on-site and online, to create a strong community of health.
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