It’s time for hospitals to become more active in their communities

Good afternoon, readers.

Hospitals are seen, sometimes literally, as saviors within their communities. To treat the afflicted is no minor responsibility. But their reach can—and should—extend well beyond treating the patients that arrive at a hospital’s doorsteps.

That was the takeaway I got from a conversation with experts such as Kyu Rhee of IBM Watson Health, Dr. Josh Sharfstein and Dr. Rachel Thornton of Johns Hopkins, Barbie Robinson, the director of health services in Sonoma County, CA, and Dr. Jack Westfall, director of the Robert Graham Center, during a panel discussion with Fortune this morning.

To put things in context: Hospitals are largely judged on metrics such as how many patients are readmitted before being released. Those metrics can dictate their rankings on “Best Hospital” lists.

But that alone can’t explain a hospital’s capabilities or explain the progress that has to be made. All of our panelists this morning emphasized that a hospital needs to be more than a triage center—it needs to be an active participant in the community on issues such as environmental sustainability, food security, mental health services, and actively engaging the populations that they serve.

In short: It’s not enough to just be a brick and mortar building that treats those who are already sick, you need to actually do the groundwork to make sure that people don’t get sick in the first place.

We’ll have more on this, because it’s a critical discussion. But suffice to say I’m glad we had this one.

Read on for the day’s news.

Sy Mukherjee
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy

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