In July 1961, Tri-City Hospital opened its doors for the first time to support a rapidly growing coastal North County region which previously had few advanced medical services close to home. Over the last six decades, Tri-City Medical Center has grown into a beacon of advanced healthcare in the region, adding new services, expanding our team of renowned physicians, and adopting innovative technologies that help patients overcome health challenges and create the life they want to live.
Through all of this, we’ve remained laser focused on the needs of the community and serving as a health partner to all within the region. As a true partner, we’ve paved creative ways to engage with community members and meet them where they are, often far outside the walls of our hospital campus and medical offices.
Our efforts to engage community members and empower them to proactively manage their health are collectively known as our Community Outreach and Support Through Active Leadership or COASTAL Commitment. Through dynamic partnerships with nearly 60 community-based organizations, Tri-City Medical Center and our staff provide financial and in-kind support, as well as active leadership, to address community health issues and improve healthcare equity. These partnerships have resulted in data-driven care programs developed in collaboration with our community partners to meet the specific health needs of the North County community. It’s important to recognize that the health needs of our community are much broader than emergency care and surgeries. In collaboration with our partners, we support programs that enhance the overall well-being of community members.
One example is our work with the North County LGBTQ+ Resource Center’s Unicorn Homes and Behavioral Health programs. The Unicorn Homes Program is a wrap-around service for homeless youth ages 14-24 that aims to reunite each youth with their family or find a permanent home in cases where the family is unable to support them. In addition to housing and reunification, Unicorn Homes ensures access to mental health resources, job readiness, life coaching, and independent living skills. While the long-term impact of the collaboration will be reflected in big picture data in the future, we know the health of individuals participating in the program has already been positively influenced. With the support of Tri-City Medical Center and other partners, in 2020 alone, the North County LGBTQ+ Resource Center delivered 2,000 hours of clinical care and served over 150 community members.
Convenient and accessible quality healthcare is also paramount for our community. In July, we grew our partnership with Kaiser Permanente San Diego to enable more individuals and families in North County to enjoy a wider range of services close to home. Kaiser Permanente members living in North County now have access to inpatient hospital care, including surgical services and specialty procedures, at Tri-City Medical Center in addition to services through our emergency department, making quality care more convenient while enhancing the patient experience. This partnership expanded access to integrated health care services closer to home for more than 185,000 community members in North County.
These are a few examples of the creative programs and partnerships formed to improve the health of community members before they arrive on our campus or in our medical offices. We are now partnering with the Coast News to provide relevant and insightful health information through this very column to our community. This column provides a platform for skilled and respected physician and healthcare leadership partners to share insights that can help you make informed healthcare decisions. From “things all community members and patients should know” to tips for specific health issues, this column will serve as a direct line of communication between healthcare experts and you, the community we exist to serve. Whether you’re interested in better understanding what options exist for resolving the pain you experience in your shoulder, how to be a healthcare advocate for your aging loved one, or another healthcare issue, you will receive input on health care topics impacting the North County community directly from your community experts.
Six decades after the hospital opened its doors, we remain committed to embracing new opportunities to fulfill the vision first established by the North County leaders who championed Tri-City’s creation. We’re proud of the accolades we’ve earned and the legacy we’ve cultivated within the community, but as you can tell, we’re embracing new and creative methods to advance the health and wellness of our community. If there’s a topic you’re interested in and would like to see explored in a future edition of this column, please send a message to [email protected] and share your idea, or give our team a call if you have any healthcare questions. This year we are celebrating our sixtieth anniversary, and we are looking forward to the next sixty years of partnership with you, the community we serve.
