The new Cedar Hill Regional Hospital opens in Southeast DC

Aneathia Brown, 25, poses for a portrait with her daughter Angel, 4, outside of Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center GW Health in Southeast Washington on April 15. (Craig Hudson/For the Washington Post)

See "When minutes matter: A community finally gets the trauma center it needs," Washington Post.

Planning for the new hospital there led me to write a series of articles and follow ups on how the city could do a lot more than merely open a rote hospital.  Although one of the architectural firms involved begs to differ with my take ("Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center GW Health: A model for community-centered-healthcare design/," HOK)

-- "Ordinary versus Extraordinary Planning around the rebuilding of the United Medical Center in Southeast Washington DC | Part One: Rearticulating the system of health and wellness care East of the River." (2018)
-- "Part Two: Creating a graduate health and biotechnology research initiative on the St. Elizabeths campus," (2018)
-- "Part three: the potential for donations around an expanded program," (2018)
-- "Revisiting East of the River medical care: United Medical Center," (2018)
-- "Update on DC's plans to build a new United Medical Center," (2018)

-- "A glaring illustration of the need for comprehensive health and wellness planning in DC: Providence Hospital," (2018)

-- "Community Health Improvement Planning," (2019)

-- "Big omission in blog series on advance hospital/health and wellness planning, public health planning: addiction services," (2024)

One of the examples I mentioned of a facility proposal offering more to the community, is St. Anthony Hospital in Chicago, which just moved forward on creating a hospital campus with a variety of community serving facilities ("St. Anthony finally moves forward on building new hospital in Little Village," Crain's Chicago Business, "Saint Anthony plans big for southwest Chicago campus," Catholic Health World, St. Anthony Community Health Needs Assessment).

From the second article:

Besides the hospital, the campus will have affordable housing, an outpatient clinic, educational centers for children and adults, a recreation center, athletics fields and green space, a venue for private events and retail shops. 

The building site is 1.5 miles from the 126-year-old Saint Anthony Hospital, a Catholic nonprofit facility unaffiliated with a larger system. The new campus and the existing hospital are in a section of the city largely populated by working-class or impoverished families, many of them Black, Hispanic or Asian and many of them immigrants.

... The size and plans for the Focal Point campus grew in the many years since it was first envisioned. Medaglia and Sifuentes say that is a result of input from residents of the surrounding neighborhoods. At forums that Saint Anthony hosted about the project, residents said they wanted not just quality health care but childcare, programs to keep kids off the streets, vocational training and more.

"That's how we realized that the initial 11 acres that the city was going to sell us was really not enough," Medaglia says. It also became clear that those programs couldn't be financed on hospital revenue alone, which comes mostly from Medicaid and other public insurance programs. 

I outlined a similar program for some facilities in Salt Lake County ("Hospitals as urban anchors/revitalization levers, not usually, but with great potential to serve communities in important ways: Examples are two forthcoming projects by Intermountain Health and University of Utah Health").  

WRT Intermountain in Downtown, the city's planning processes gave them no leverage to try to do anything.  For example, I suggested that the needs to be replaced Central City Recreation Center could be incorporated.

Profits versus community grants.  Some of the comments on this Post article, "Residents welcome new hospital in Southeast D.C.: ‘We need this’," criticized DC for picking a for profit hospital chain, Universal Health Services, to run the Cedar Hill.  I would have felt the same way before my myriad hospital stays, but my primary hospital is run by HCA, and they do okay.  Although they drop services that are in need, like nutrition counseling and diabetes management, that aren't profitable.

HCA doesn't do much in the way of benevolence.  Making a profit is key and that is repatriated to headquarters.

An interesting element of the St. Anthony project is that they say they will direct "profits" to community grants.

Seeding grassroots programs Once the campus is in full operation, Medaglia says the financial plan shows it will generate $7 million more than needed to cover costs every year. He adds that the extra funds will be awarded in grants to not-for-profit organizations serving the surrounding community. 

Sifuentes says that is one way the campus will be transformational to the approximately 440,000 people who live within its service area. The grants will be a reliable source of funding for the many church and community organizations that address food and housing insecurity and other social issues that affect health and well-being.