UPMC Western Maryland reports millions in community benefit

Jun. 12—CUMBERLAND — UPMC Western Maryland estimates that it provided $68 million in community benefits last year through programs and services attempting to improve the health and quality of life in the communities it serves.

Included in that figure is providing free care, which amounted to $17 million; mission driven health services, which amounted to $45 million; and health profession education and community health support programs, which make up the other $6 million.

"The first area, providing free care — for those that don't have the ability to pay their medical bills, we cover that for them. Obviously, it's based on income levels and the size of the household," said Michele Martz, president of UPMC Western Maryland. "The biggest amount of money is in these mission driven health services. These are things we provide to the community that maybe wouldn't be provided otherwise if we weren't here doing it — mental health services, chronic disease clinics — we make sure we take extra care of patients with diabetes, and heart failure, and pulmonary disease (and) our dialysis patients. We have high rates of that in our area so we want to make sure that we're here to take care of those patients."

Also included in the mission driven services, UPMC Western Maryland works with its partners to have home assessments to make sure people have proper medications and living environments, it provided over 21,000 rides to patients to and from appointments and offers prescription drugs on discharge. There is a program to send nutritional assistance to pockets in the community with minimal access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

"Another little bit of the community benefit is health education," Martz said. "All of the area clinicians have to get their clinical training, so they come to the hospital to be clinically supervised by our doctors and our nurses that allow them to then come back and work in the health care field, hopefully right here in our community."

The hospital system is estimated to have had a $700 million impact on the local economy.

"That takes our total expenses we have for the year and it's a multiplying effect. The state of Maryland uses two, which means every dollar that we put into the community, there's $2 that are being spent on other services," said Martz.

UPMC overall estimated it had $1.7 billion in community benefits that the system provided during the fiscal year 2020.

"UPMC Western Maryland is proud to be able to contribute so much to our region," said Martz. "The care we provide and the services we support are making our communities healthier and stronger. Our ability to positively impact so many lives is multiplied by the scale of our UPMC contributions across the many regions we serve. We will continue to invest in the health and well-being of our region providing local access to world-class health services."

Follow staff writer Brandon Glass on Twitter @Bglass13.