UH Otis Moss Jr. Health Center Cares for the Community
At 82, Mary Hollingsworth makes health care a priority. The retired hospital housekeeper regularly visits University Hospitals Otis Moss Jr. Health Center in her Cleveland neighborhood, where the staff helps her manage her asthma, arthritis and high blood pressure. Regular checkups like these are essential for older adults and UH strives to make sure patients receive them.
What makes Mary’s case unusual, however, is the herculean effort she puts forth to get to her crucial clinic visits. In short, she walks. Using a somewhat rickety walker to steady her halting gait, Mary slowly but determinedly makes her way from her Fairfax neighborhood home across five city blocks to reach the doors at UH Otis Moss. The whole journey, she says, takes about 20 minutes, after which she says she’s “quite tired.” But it had been working for Mary - until the COVID-19 pandemic.
Overcoming Obstacles
In the heart of the pandemic, Mary missed a regularly scheduled appointment at UH Otis Moss. Then another. Concerned, her health care team, including nurse practitioner Evelyn Duffy, DNP, and nurse and clinical coordinator Coretha Jones, RN, reached out to Mary to try to pinpoint the source of the problem. Turns out the culprit was that rickety walker, which finally broke for good, which left Mary with no way to safely walk to her appointments – or anywhere else. So she just stopped going out. What’s more, a frustrating conversation with her insurance company left Mary no closer to getting the new walker she so desperately needed.
“I get tired, and sometimes I get dizzy and I’m worried that I might fall,” shared Mary. “I really needed that walker.”
As health care professionals, the first priority is to heal. But an important corollary of healing is helping patients navigate the sometimes-byzantine world of health care so that healing is possible. And in Mary’s case, that’s exactly what happened. With Mary’s independence and ability to manage her health on the line, the team at UH Otis Moss sprang into action, researching different options for getting her the new walker she needed. Coretha Jones got the process moving, and patient navigator Alicia Stubbs was able to secure a walker.
Independence Restored
Now that she has her new walker, Mary has settled back into her normal routine, walking to her appointments at UH Otis Moss and sometimes even walking around her block for exercise. As her health care team says, Mary is one of the many success stories that illustrate the value of good primary care in not only supporting life, but quality of life.
Individual stories like Mary’s are the heart of health care, but they’re only possible when people work together, compassionately to make them happen, from the health care provider, to the nurse, to the patient navigator and scores of others who daily make a difference for patients in our local communities.
To support patients like Mary, make a gift to UH on Giving Tuesday.