Transforming healthcare starts by meeting people where they are
This post is part of our Improving Health Leadership Blog, which explores Sentara’s leadership on issues affecting the health and well-being of our consumers and how we’re pioneering new ways to make health care simple, seamless, personal, and more affordable
That is what transformation means to me: focused work that moves good ideas into practice—helping a child receive care without leaving school, helping an older adult receive trusted primary care at home, and making care easier to access, more connected, and more responsive to daily life.
After more than 135 years of serving our communities, Sentara launched the Transformation Office in 2023 to help accelerate One Sentara, our enterprise strategic plan. I am proud to help lead this work because it keeps us focused on turning strategy into action.
The aim of One Sentara is clear: become a more consumer-focused, highly integrated organization that meets people’s health and wellness needs in more connected, convenient, and affordable ways.
Turning ideas into impact
Sentara is an integrated delivery network with a mission to improve health every day. One Sentara makes that mission more tangible by redesigning how we work so we can better serve patients, members, and communities—and earn their trust as a partner in health and well-being.
The Transformation Office brings together clinical, operational, and strategic leaders to identify opportunities, design solutions, and scale what works. The work starts with a practical question: What barriers are patients, members, and communities facing—and how do we remove them?
Since the start of our One Sentara transformation, we have launched more than 1,500 initiatives across the enterprise, led by hundreds of initiative owners ranging from frontline clinicians to operational leaders.
These initiatives are designed to improve what works today, reimagine how care is delivered, and challenge models that no longer meet people’s needs. They focus on more time with patients, better communication, lower avoidable utilization, and stronger access, billing, and patient and member experience.
Two examples—school-based telehealth and home-based primary care—show how transformation can translate into practical, measurable improvements in access, experience, and outcomes.
Expanding access through school-based telehealth
For many families, timely care for school-aged children is not as simple as making an appointment.
Transportation, scheduling conflicts, and long wait times can turn a minor illness into a disruption for the whole household.
Through One Sentara, Sentara launched school-based telehealth clinics in Virginia and North Carolina to address these barriers directly by bringing care into the school setting. In partnership with local school systems, students and staff can access acute primary care services without leaving campus.
The clinics combine on-site support with virtual clinical expertise. A licensed practical nurse is present in the school, while Sentara providers connect virtually to conduct exams, review symptoms, and make clinical decisions during the visit.
After launching clinics in Hampton and Harrisonburg in October 2024, Sentara expanded the program to Newport News and Portsmouth in 2026. Over the next two years, we plan to expand to more than 25 Title I schools across Virginia.
The impact is immediate and tangible:
- Students receive timely care, helping them remain in school and continue learning
- Parents experience fewer disruptions to work and daily life
- Schools gain a powerful tool to support student wellness and attendance
By meeting families where they already are, we are improving convenience, reducing barriers, and supporting healthier students, families, and communities.
A Sentara provider consults with a patient as part of a school-based telehealth clinic.
Home-based primary care: bringing trusted care to patients
Access challenges don’t end with childhood. For many older adults and patients with complex health needs, simply getting to a doctor’s office can be a significant obstacle.
Sentara’s home-based primary care model brings care directly to patients who face mobility limitations, transportation challenges, cognitive barriers, or complex chronic conditions.
Advanced practice providers work with primary care physicians to deliver comprehensive care in the home—from managing chronic conditions to addressing acute needs, reviewing medications, and supporting transitions after a hospital stay.
This approach does more than provide convenience. It:
- Enables earlier intervention and more personalized treatment
- Helps identify issues that may go unnoticed in traditional settings
- Supports smoother hospital-to-home transitions and helps reduce avoidable readmissions
At its core, this initiative reflects a simple belief: healthcare should adapt to the patient, not the other way around.
Frances Brooks (left) with Nurse Practitioner Amanda Coyle in Brooks’ home in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
From innovation to systemic change
Both initiatives grew from our colleagues’ commitment to making care simpler, more personal, and more affordable. They show why transformation matters: it helps us test new models, learn quickly, and scale what delivers value.
That discipline is increasingly important as health systems face rising demand, workforce constraints, affordability pressures, and higher expectations for simpler, more connected patient and member experiences.
By identifying unmet needs, testing new models, and scaling successful solutions, we are building a pipeline of change that reaches across the enterprise—not as a separate effort, but as part of how we deliver on our strategy.
At Sentara, the Transformation Office helps lead that work in partnership with teams across the organization. But transformation is not owned by one office or one function. It belongs to all of us—because every colleague has a role in turning ideas into practical solutions that improve outcomes, strengthen communities, and help people receive care in the way that works best for them.
The work ahead is to keep listening, keep learning, and keep redesigning care around the people we serve. That is how transformation becomes more than strategy: It becomes how we strengthen trust, expand access, and improve health every day.