Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency has had that name for 43 years and officials there say that’s long enough. On Friday, they announced they are changing the organization’s name to Common Ground Health.
Trilby de Jung is the CEO of the organization which is a regional health planning agency. She says the new name better reflects their mission to help the region find common ground on health issues.
de Jung says the organization wants to increase its efforts in reaching out to the community.
“What we need at the table, we need that consumer voice and we are very dedicated to finding it and to bringing it to our table. When you have a name like Common Ground Health there’s more of a sense of, ok, there’s some people here that are looking to work together.”
de Jung notes that with pending changes in health care due to plans in Washington to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, it's more important than other for local stakeholders to find common ground on a number of issues.
For instance, de Jung says that Common Ground Health often has reached out to owners of small business in this region.
“We sit with the business community and we work on that. We’ve been doing that on a weekly basis, we still have regular meetings with business to talk about what is our common ground in terms of priorities that will really help small businesses who are struggling with costs, who are struggling with workers comp issues like back pain.”
Officials say that although the organization has a new name, a key part of its mission remains, and that is using community-wide health data to identify trends, document disparities and test assumptions.
