South Side Healthy Community Organization’s Health Care Model Aims To Improve Access

South Side Healthy Community Organization’s Health Care Model Aims To Improve Access

By Tia Carol Jones

An organization dedicated to improving healthcare outcomes and access on the South Side of Chicago is continuing the mission it began three years ago. 

The South Side Healthy Community Organization (SSHCO) was founded in 2021 to close the health equity gap on the South side of Chicago. The State of Illinois was looking to fund organizations and programs that were addressing health equity. The South Side Healthy Community Organization won an award to be funded up to five years, with the goal of being sustainable in a five-year period. 

Thirteen health care organizations – hospital systems, safety net hospitals and federally qualified health centers – came together to develop a model to improve access to care on the South Side of Chicago in 15 zip codes: 60609, 60615, 60616, 60617, 60619, 60620, 60621, 60628, 60629, 60632, 60636, 60637, 60643, 60649 and 60653.

Kimberly Hobson, CEO of the South Side Healthy Community Organization, said the Healthy Community Model adds doctors, nurses and specialists; addresses chronic and preventive care management; expands care coordination and provider collaboration; connects residents to social drivers of health resources –food, transportation and housing; and built a health information exchange, which allows the 13 partners to share clinical information, with the goal of improving wellness on the South side.

The SSHCO has four pillars: To increase and enhance primary care and dramatically improve maternal and infant care and health, address the chronic disease and behavioral needs of the community, address care coordination needs and social determinant needs and preventative care, and to transform transition care and share data with a connected care technology platform.

The services provided by the South Side Healthy Community Organization are accessible to those individuals in the 15 zip codes who receive Medicaid benefits, as well as uninsured patients in those zip codes. Care coordinators, which includes community health workers and nurse care coordinators, are deployed across 22 South side clinics and emergency rooms talking to patients, scheduling visits and reminding them about their medical appointments.

“We have an issue with access. We are getting individuals in to see their primary care appointments. We have made, over time, about 1,500 connections with these patients to their primary care providers,” Hobson said.

The South Side Healthy Community Organization is also connecting them to and referring the patients to social resources on the South side. Those resources come from community-based organizations that SSHCO provided grants to. The SSCHO has referred more than 7,000 patients to social resources including food, transportation and housing. 

SSCHO also supports community members as they navigate the health care system by getting them to their doctors and their specialist, including addressing maternal-fetal medicine. To have the providers that the organization needs in order to increase access, the SSCHO has funded and subsidized 60 primary care and specialty care providers on the South side.

During the two-and-a-half-year period SSCHO has been in operation, the 60 primary and specialty care providers the organization has funded and subsidized have conducted 80,000 additional patient visits. Hobson said this is helping to close the gap around access.

“Our goal was to address the four components of our model. We needed to address access, and in order to do that, we needed to increase the number of providers. Our goal is to subsidize the salaries of 90 new providers and we’re at about 65 at this particular time,” Hobson said.

The SSHCO also has housed 78 families through its housing program, which is a program where individuals are housed for three years. With support, after a three-year period the people in the program will be able to get jobs and sustain their own housing.

For more information about the South Side Healthy Community Organization, visit https://southsidehealthycommunity.com.


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