UVA Health outlines expansion plan

UVA Health will aim to improve access to care by hiring more primary care providers, expanding its statewide specialty care network and making the health system the best place to work as part of its first-ever 10-year strategic plan.

“As an academic health system whose mission is to transform health and inspire hope for all Virginians and beyond, our vision is to be the foremost public academic health system leading this change in the industry,” K. Craig Kent, MD, UVA Health’s chief executive officer and UVA’s executive vice president for health affairs, said in a recent news release.

Locally, University of Virginia-affiliated UVA Health owns hospitals and other medical offices in Culpeper, Haymarket and Manassas. It acquired full ownership of these operations in 2021 from its former joint venture partner, North Carolina-based Novant Health.

Key pillars of the plan – which seeks to make UVA Health the nation’s top public academic health system – are already being launched.

For example, the University of Virginia recently announced the launch of the Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology to position UVA at the forefront of cutting- edge medicine such as cellular and gene therapies that revolutionize how diseases are treated and cured.

The plan was developed over more than a year based on input from more than 3,000 people from inside and outside the health system, said Jason Lineen, MBA, UVA Health’s chief strategy officer.

Some of the plan’s highlights include:

► During the next several years, UVA Health plans to open multiple additional primary care sites throughout the Charlottesville area, Culpeper and Northern Virginia to meet the vastly increasing needs of the health system’s patients and workforce.

► Over the past year, more than 50 physicians have been hired for UVA Health’s community medical centers and clinics in northern Virginia and Culpeper.

► The health system also plans to expand its “digital front door” to make it easier for patients to access care – for example, by scheduling appointments online more easily.

► UVA Health plans to build a statewide network to expand its ability to provide high- quality care closer to home for all Virginians with serious and complex health conditions.

This network will expand on the care now available across Central Virginia as well as Culpeper and Northern Virginia from UVA Health’s recent acquisition of three additional medical centers and associated ambulatory clinics.