County Health Leaders Share Insight On Local Hospitals

UMD Capital Region Health Center, Medstar Southern Maryland, Luminis Health Doctors Community Medical Center Present Challenges and Successes of Local Hospitals

By Raoul Dennis // Photography By Amir Stoudamire

In a unique presentation, leaders at UMD Health Center, Medstar Southern Maryland, Luminis Health Doctors Community Medical Center discussed the best health options at their respective institutions during a May 8 meeting of the Greater Prince George’s Business Roundtable.

Included in the discussion were Luminis Health Doctors Community Medical Center President Deneen Richmond, Medstar Southern Maryland President and CEO Dr. Stephen Michaels, and UMD Capital Region Health President & CEO Nathaniel Richardson.

“Luminis Health is making significant investments in our community, especially related to behavioral health and maternity care. Within the last couple of years, we’ve opened a comprehensive behavioral health pavilion on our Lanham campus,” said Luminis Health Doctors Community Medical Center President Deneen Richmond. “We offer walk-in urgent behavioral health care services for kids as young as four years old all the way through the adult years.”

Richmond addressed areas of need specific to Prince George’s.

“We know there are many needs related to chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease. We believe it is important to meet the community where it is. Luminis Health does extensive community outreach and screening for high blood pressure, diabetes, and other health issues. Beyond the screening, we aim to get people connected to the ongoing care that they need and deserve,” she said.

One of the issues of concern at all area hospital centers includes staff morale and shortages in staffing.

“As I look at morale in health care and the number of people that we lost during the pandemic who will not come back [I can see] that's really what's caused a lot of the shortages that we now suffer, and that's causing us to experience significant financial pressures because we can't recruit the qualified people that need to do these things,” said Medstar Southern Maryland President and CEO Dr. Stephen Michaels.  “These are high-tech jobs. A nurse is an extremely high-tech job. I can't tell you how important a good nurse is to your care. It's a long process to train that person. We're not training enough of those people.”

UMD Capital Region Health President & CEO Nathaniel Richardson agreed with Dr. Michaels regarding the shortage of healthcare workers as a critical issue.

“We've got to do more to protect the healthcare workers not just here in Maryland, but across the United States,” Richardson said. “When you think about the shortages that the my peers here have talked about---one of the problems we have is post-pandemic no one wants to come back to healthcare. A big portion of that reason is fear of violence against the healthcare workers -- whether it's the family, whether it's the patients themselves, and nurses have so many opportunities to go to [work in] different venues.”

A more positive development at Medstar includes a grant to aid young mothers and their infant children in underserved communities.

“We just were awarded a $5.5 million federal HRSA grant to fund maternal and child programmatic efforts. This will basically focus on making sure that we have wrap-around services to Black and underserved communities here in Prince George's County. This is in collaboration with Greater Baden,” Michaels said.

“At the core of the program is the development of a specialized care team that spans the entire county. We have perinatal navigators, health educators, community health workers, and they will collaboratively address multifaceted factors negatively impacting Black maternal and infant outcomes. It's going to operate across multiple reproductive stages, and it'll be a comprehensive care model that aims to bring substantial improvements in health outcomes to this vulnerable population.”

UMD Capital Region Health’s Nathaniel Richardson reminded Roundtable members of the reach of the center.

“When [you] think about Capital Region, I want you all to think not just about the Largo Hospitals. There are eight campuses that I have the joy and privilege of managing across Prince George's County,” he explained. “We have a joint venture within Encompass Health, a rehabilitation hospital in Bowie. We have the Sunland Clinic, which is mostly family medicine and OB-GYN. We have a multispecialty clinic at the National Harbor location. We have a training facility with medical residents at the new Carrollton location. We have a Largo location. We have Bowie Emergency Department, and we have a Laurel Freestanding Medical Facility which is an emergency department and mostly an observation unit that takes care of patients up to about 24 to 36 hours, depending on their insurance. Just a couple of months ago, we opened our Center for Advanced Medicine, which will house our cancer institute as well as some medical practices.”

Richardson also took a moment during the occasion to announce the opening of the new cancer center.

“We're very proud that we've opened that Cancer Institute and Center for Advanced Medicine,” Richardson said also noting the upcoming ribbon cutting on June 4.

  “When I came here to Maryland, one of the things I did was read the RAND report which talked about the health of the community that I had been asked to serve in. What I saw each year that I looked in that RAND report was the same issues continuing to plague Prince George's County: cardiovascular disease, cancer, specifically cancers with women around breast, men cancer around prostates.”

A lifetime Achievement Award was presented to President & CEO of the Maryland State Hospital Association.