Simplifying health care
Perhaps more than most people, Carol Paret is well aware how intimidating our health care system can be. “Because it’s complex, and we’re all out of our element,” she says. “I mean, think about when a doctor is telling you something. At some point there has to be a piece of trust there.”
But too often, adds Paret, that trust is hindered by language and/or transportation issues, daunting barriers to health care access for many people. Or it surfaces in “medical illiteracy,” the term embodied in typical patient complaints like, “I just don’t know what to expect,” “I just don’t know how to ask what I need to ask,” or “I don’t know how to get answers to my questions.”
“It can be very intimidating,” she says.
As Memorial Hermann Health System’s Chief Community Benefits Officer and CEO of its subsidiary Community Benefit Corporation, however, Paret oversees an organization that, despite the usual bureaucratic challenges and sometime problematic public policy, has been able to make a real difference at the grassroots level — largely thanks to the innovative efforts of Paret and a staff she calls “passionate and committed.”
“That’s the key,” she says. “You have to have people that are committed to the bigger picture, the bigger outcome.”
Paret grew up in the Hardin County seat of Silsbee — prime Big Thicket country — and holds degrees from the University of Houston and the University of Texas School of Public Health. She’s been at MHHS for 31 years. In her time on the job, “I’d love to tell you that there are these key community indicators that have moved; can’t do that,” Paret admits. “Can I tell you there are hundreds of kids who have gone through high school because of the work that we’ve done? Absolutely.”
The CBC functions as a liaison between the community and the more clinical side of the health care industry, hospitals and doctor’s offices. Its Community Health Workers, or “navigators,” help steer uninsured and underinsured ER patients toward more feasible health care options and available public-assistance opportunities, down to identifying the appropriate bus line they need to ride to their treatment.
One of its most visible programs has been its free 24-hour triage line where, Paret says, “you can talk to a nurse (about) what you’re seeing, and they’re going to give you that comfort that, ‘No, this can really wait till the morning’ or ‘Nope, you need to go to the emergency room.’ ” (It’s 713-338-7979; write it down.)
Paret says she has a soft spot for kids. As her proudest achievement, she points to Memorial Hermann’s Health Centers for Schools, an ambitious partnership between five Houston-area school districts that now serves 72 different campuses, prekindergarten through high school.
These places “can bring me to tears every day with a story there,” Paret says.
Founded in 1995, the program employs nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, dietitians and other health professionals to treat anything from asthma, ADHD, dental problems and pervasive acne to mental-health disorders like anxiety and depression.
Social workers cover the centers as well.
“Children in many, many ways are tough as nails and fragile at the same time,” Paret says. “With that combination of services, we can really deal with many of the issues that are driving their feeling that they’re not smart, that they don’t have self-worth, that they just can’t.”
Treat a kid successfully and “you’ve just given them a brandnew frame of reference for what their life could be,” she adds.
Paret’s office is also trying to raise awareness about “food insecurity,” households that either run out of food or worry that they might. According to Paret, more than 16 percent of Houstonians are food-insecure; identifying those who are can be critical to designing a proper health plan for them.
Earlier this year, the CBC partnered with Target and fellow nonprofit Wholesome Wave to issue qualifying families vouchers for fresh fruits and vegetables from Target or certain Houston-area farmers markets.
“Sometimes, those little things can take (someone) from being food-insecure to being food-secure,” Paret says.
The CBC’s other key initiative is Exercise Is Medicine, which encourages regular exercise as an effective — and much less expensive — way of combating chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and certain types of cancer.
“Health care treats the disease once you have it, but that’s really the expensive point,” Paret says. “If you think of us on this cliff, we keep having people fall off the cliff. We’ve got to back everybody back down off that cliff and onto the ground.”
Paret also serves on the board of directors of El Centro del Corazon, a Federally Qualified Health Center in Houston’s East End she describes as the “top of the funnel for primary care”; and the Texas Health Institute, a think tank whose goal is to shape a more sensible health care policy.
“I’ve been willing to do anything that’s been asked of me,” she says. “I think I have a reputation of, if I tell you I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it. And I’m extremely passionate and vocal.”
As a nonprofit, she adds, “we have an obligation (to the community), and we need to do that. We can’t sit back as health care organizations and say, ‘Hey, the state of Houston health stinks, but that’s not my problem.’ If you don’t like something, you’ve gotta get out there and change it.”