The Georgia Hospital Association (GHA) honored Phoebe Worth Medical Center with its prestigious 2024 Community Leadership Award at the GHA Annual Summer Meeting last week.  The award was established in 1997 to annually recognize a hospital that has made exemplary contributions to the health and wellbeing of the people of Georgia through leadership in community health improvement.  Winners must show results-oriented successes with initiatives to improve community health and have developed innovative and collaborative approaches to meeting identified community needs.

“It was a great honor to accept this award on behalf of our outstanding and dedicated Phoebe Worth team who work so diligently every day to serve the people in and around Worth County,” said Kim Gilman, Phoebe Worth President.

According to a GHA video announcing the award, “Phoebe Worth has touched all aspects of its community with efforts to improve the health and wellbeing of its patients and community members.  From addressing food insecurities to bolstering the state’s adult health and family planning programs to ensuring access to prescription drugs and behavioral health resources, Phoebe Worth has gone above and beyond in identifying health challenges and finding solutions.” 

The GHA highlighted the hospital’s partnership with the Village Community Garden which includes hosting monthly health and wellness workshops.  Phoebe Worth also works with the local health department on an annual drive-through flu immunization clinic and provides funding that allows the health department to operate programs that serve patients with hypertension and diabetes and provide women with annual cancer screenings and access to birth control.  Other community outreach efforts include providing first responders with doses of a lifesaving medication that can reverse the effects of a drug overdose, managing a program that helps patients obtain free prescription medication and furnishing free office space for Aspire Behavioral Health.

“We have a sacred responsibility to provide quality healthcare to the people of our area, but that service to the community can’t end at our hospital’s doors.  We are proud to be members of this community, and it is our privilege to continue to find new ways to improve public health and make Sylvester a better place to live,” Gilman said. 

Phoebe Worth is a 25-bed critical access hospital in Sylvester which also operates a rural health primary care clinic and a specialty care clinic.  The GHA is nonprofit trade association that serves 145 hospitals in Georgia.