The questions are simple: Where do you go to the doctor? How long does it take you to get there? If there were a new hospital closer to home, would you use it?
But the survey underway in Prince George’s County is intended to address a complex problem. Officials expect the data to give them a detailed look at the state of health and health care in the county, where conditions such as diabetes and heart disease are much more common than in the rest of the region and most of the state.
At the same time, officials hope that the information will help determine how to build a new regional hospital and primary-care network that would attract residents from a broad range of incomes and ethnic backgrounds.
Local government and health officials are looking not only at how much a hospital would cost to build but also at what types of services residents need to help them stay healthy and out of the emergency room.
“The basic question they are asking is what would a hospital center and a network around it really mean for health in the county,” said Joshua Sharfstein, Maryland’s health secretary. “It’s not just the number of visits and services; it is about how to design a system to maximize the effect on health.”
That approach, planners hope, could help lower high rates of asthma, diabetes, HIV, heart disease and low infant birth weight in the predominantly black county — problems that have been linked to racial disparities in health care.
At the same time, it could help the system become financially secure by attracting patients from inside and outside the county who can afford to pay for care.
“In Prince George’s County, you have an interesting dynamic,” said Stephen B. Thomas, director of the University of Maryland Center for Health Equity. “You have the highest-per-capita-income black population in the United States. Some of the premier health institutions in the country are in our state. The National Institutes of Health is in our back yard. Yet you have among the biggest health disparities in our country. Why are we not translating what we know?”
The center is part of the university’s School of Public Health, which is conducting the community survey and expects to assess the views and needs of 1,000 residents.
Last year, after several years of political wrangling, state and county officials, prodded by Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D), announced a $600 million plan to build a new regional hospital in Prince George’s to replace the ailing Prince George’s Hospital Center.
Large indigent population
The publicly owned hospital, which is operated by Dimensions Healthcare System, serves a large number of indigent patients and relies on $30 million a year in subsidies from state and county funds.
Those expenditures have done little to improve the county’s troubling health statistics. And with pressure intensifying from the federal government to rein in health-care costs and improve public health, officials knew further delay could impair the state health-care system’s ability to continue to qualify for key federal financial support.
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