May 24, 2019— The mission of Catholic Health System based in Buffalo, N.Y., is to treat all patients with respect and dignity regardless of what brings them through the doors.
That’s why the Mount St. Mary’s Neighborhood Health Center in Niagara Falls, at one of the system’s five hospitals, goes “above and beyond” to help patients living with drug and alcohol use disorders, says CHS 340B Program Business Manager Dorothy Shuldman, Using 340B savings, the primary care clinic assists these patients with support groups, healthy meals, transportation, infant care, medication lockboxes, and more.
Shuldman is the newest profile in our Faces of 340B video series. The health center’s assistance is just one of the many ways in which CHS hospitals use program savings to provide community benefit services in the region, she says. Sisters of Charity Hospital in Buffalo, for instance, uses savings to provide a dedicated fund that helps oncology patients living with low incomes afford their oncology treatments.
340B also has enabled the system to expand the community benefit services it offers, Shuldman notes. In Buffalo, the system is looking to use program savings to help launch an infectious disease clinic to treat patients with opioid use disorders. These patients have a higher risk of contracting diseases such as hepatitis C.
The efforts are all part of Catholic Health’s alignment of its mission with the “human side” of health care, Shuldman notes. “That is the exact lens through which we administer our 340B program to serve the vulnerable patient population of the communities,” she says. But scaling back or eliminating 340B would hinder these crucial efforts.
Check out Dorothy’s video profile at our Faces of 340B website.