Dawn Ridley (center) president of LHDCMC Foundation is all smiles and joined by Gary Michael (at right) with guests Tony Perez of LS Perez Consulting (far left) and CEO of Luminis Health Tori Bayless (far right) during the revitalized annual golf tournament fundraiser held in June at The Country Club At Woodmore.

Luminis Health Leaders Discuss New Behavioral Health Pavilion, Women's Health, And Expansion Of Services

By Kristina Townsend

A recent addition has brought much-needed change to Luminis Health Doctors Community Medical Center (LHDCMC) in Lanham. They’ve made it their personal mission to bring better and easily accessible health care to Prince George’s County by opening their Behavioral Health Pavilion. The Pavilion opened last fall, providing a range of behavioral health services, from urgent care to (partial) hospitalization to therapy. In March 2023, they opened a 16-bed adult in-patient psychiatric unit as an addition to the Behavioral Health Pavilion.

“That will round out our complement of behavioral health services on our Lanham campus,” said Deneen Richmond, President of Luminis Health Doctors Community Medical Center. She also spoke about the staffing of the Pavilion, the group ranging from drug counselors to psychologists. “It’s a multi-disciplinary team,” she said. “To be able to provide that most appropriate level of care that a person needs.”

**Luminis CEO Tori Bayless speaks just moments before the launch of the golf tournament the company hosted in Prince George’s County, Maryland. PHOTO: COURTESY LHDCMC.**

**LHDCMC’s Foundation** **President** **Dawn Ridley (speaking at left) and hospital** LHDCMC **President Deneen Richmond (right).**

Along with the staff, Deneen introduced Dawn Ridley, the vice president of development at LHDCMC. She stated that Ridley had been with Luminis Health for more than a year and that Ridley leads the center’s philanthropic efforts. Ridley has expertise in strategy business development and one of her main goals is to develop the community with philanthropic care.

“As a philanthropist myself, when I’m making a contribution, I am very curious about impact, you know, what difference is this dollar making,” Ridley said. “And here, we’re able to really show you that we are making a difference. We are providing, whether it’s breast cancer screenings, whether it’s diabetes screenings, whether it’s showing up in local communities, whether it’s supporting our citizens who are not able to transition well away from the hospital settings. We can point to what we’re doing that directly impacts the community.” Ridley said.

But one of the biggest concerns driving the changes at Luminis Health is care for women, specifically obstetrical care, referring to childbirth. Not many women stay in Prince George’s County to have their children. To help provide these much-needed services, Luminis Health recently opened a new Ob-Gyn practice in Greenbelt.

**Luminis Health President Deneen Richmond and Guy Lambert at Luminis’ successful golf fundraiser. COURTESY LUMNIS HEALTH**

“Currently, 8 out of 10 moms leave the county to deliver their babies, and that’s not good,” Deneen said. “We have women who don’t have easy access when you think about everything from that pre-conception period when you want to make sure your health is at its best, all the way through the post-part of the period after you’ve had your baby, there’s a lot of services that are needed… There’s a lot of ways that the healthcare community can partner with women to ensure that the mom and the baby have better health outcomes. And so we want to provide all of those services.”

LHDCMC submitted a Certificate of Need application in April with the Maryland Health Care Commission to build a Women’s Health Center on its campus, and the hope is to hear the Commission’s decision by the end of the year. Currently, they’re working with the county to secure permits to begin site improvements to the campus in early fall. The work includes relocating and expanding loading docks, updating the utility infrastructure for water, electric, and wastewater systems, and making major changes to roads and traffic flow through the campus.

With so much progress made, their efforts have rewarded them with recognition that is very much deserved. Recently, Luminis Health was awarded the CEO Connection Economic Justice Award for the entire health system, specifically the diversity of their workforce.

“We are very proud of the fact that here at Luminis Health we’ve had an ongoing focus on what we frequently refer to as our JEDI journey, and JEDI stands for Justice Equity, Diversity, Inclusion. And so just recently, we received an external recognition for the work that we’re doing in that space,” Richmond said.

They are especially recognized for their workforce diversity and governance diversity.

“We are knocking it out of the park with our focus around our workforce diversity,” she continued. “Both in our race and ethnicities areas, three out of our top four positions, when you look at our CEO and the three presidents, three out of those four are women. We are so very, very proud of that.”

With the new adjustments in place and their efforts to provide easier access to healthcare in mind, Richmond spoke of the challenges facing them as well, specifically regarding the workforce. She and Ridley talked about the need to spread the word about their services, especially mental health. For them, it is especially empowering to solve the problems of healthcare.

“A lot of our focus is on how we continue to build the pipeline for future workers,” Richmond said. “How do we recruit and most importantly, retain the staff that we have? I [work to] make sure that we’re doing everything that we humanly can to do things well.”