The Wright Center for Community Health recently received recognition from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) for quality work last year in three performance categories, including its use of health information technology to better serve patients and their families.
The Wright Center also made notable achievements during 2022 in these two categories: providing services to combat the COVID-19 public health emergency and screening patients for social risk factors that can impact their health, such as lack of adequate housing and food insecurity.
HRSA annually reviews the performance data of health centers across the United States and then highlights the organizations that meet or exceed its goals in categories of special focus, such as improving health equity, access, and other quality measures. It bestows the top performers with its Community Health Quality Recognition badges.
HRSA first awarded badges in 2021, using data from the prior year’s reporting period. Since then, The Wright Center has earned 10 badges. This year, the three badges awarded to The Wright Center are “Advancing Health Information Technology for Quality,” “COVID-19 Public Health Champion,” and “Addressing Social Risk Factors to Health.”
HRSA displays information about all of its badge recipients – which include many of the country’s 1,370 Federally Qualified Health Centers and 117 Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alikes, including The Wright Center – on an online dashboard accessible via its website, hrsa.gov. The Wright Center was among fewer than 12 percent of Look-Alikes nationwide to receive this year’s “Addressing Social Risk Factors to Health,” according to the dashboard.
The Wright Center operates 10 primary and preventive care practices in Northeast Pennsylvania, including a mobile medical and dental vehicle called Driving Better Health. Its practices offer integrated whole-person care, meaning patients typically have the convenience of going to a single location to access medical, dental, and behavioral health care, as well as community-based addiction treatment and recovery services. It accepts most major health insurance plans, including Medical Assistance (Medicaid), Medicare, and CHIP. No patient is turned away due to an inability to pay.
The Wright Center for Community Health is collaborating with Lackawanna Mobile X-Ray, Inc., to offer convenient mobile digital mammogram screenings at two locations in Lackawanna County.
Christen Marante, BSN, RN
The 15-minute appointments are available aboard a mobile unit at The Wright Center for Community Health Scranton Practice parking lot, 501 S. Washington Ave., from 9 a.m. to noon on Wednesday, Dec. 6. The Mid Valley Practice parking lot, 5 S. Washington Ave., Jermyn, is offering the specialty service from 1 to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 6.
To reserve your appointment, please contact Christen Marante, BSN, RN, associate vice president, Value-Based Performance Program, The Wright Center, at 570-591-5225 or marantec@TheWrightCenter.org. Participants are asked to bring insurance cards to their appointment.
“The Wright Center is proud to be able to partner with a longtime community provider of mobile diagnostics services to make life-saving mammograms more accessible to the communities we serve in the region,” said Marante. “Mammograms remain the most effective screening tool used by health care providers to find breast cancer in most women.”
Lackawanna Mobile X-Ray, Inc., is the Mid-Atlantic region’s most experienced, full-service mobile diagnostics services provider.
For more than 35 years, its highly trained specialists have been providing a wide range of mobile medical services on-site, including X-rays, EKG exams, ultrasounds, vascular studies, mammograms, and Holter monitors.
A Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike, The Wright Center for Community Health’s patient-centered medical home is an essential community provider of safety-net primary and preventive health services, a state-designated Opioid Use Disorder Center of Excellence, and a Ryan White HIV/AIDS Clinic. The Wright Center for Community Health’s nine locations in Lackawanna, Luzerne, and Wayne counties include a mobile medical and dental unit called Driving Better Health that together serve more than 40,000 unique patients annually and ensures everyone in the service area has access to integrated, affordable, high-quality health services regardless of their insurance status, ZIP code, or ability to pay.For more information about The Wright Center for Community Health, go to TheWrightCenter.org or call 570-230-0019.
Carmen Passaniti, a veteran paramedic and longtime volunteer with the Dalton Fire Co., joined The Wright Center for Community Health as its director of employee health and continuing medical education coordinator. The post allows him to pursue his passion to serve the community by spreading knowledge about CPR and other life-saving techniques.
The American Heart Association-designated site will offer CPR and related courses to professionals and people wanting skills to respond in cardiac emergency
Longtime paramedic Carmen Passaniti knows that saving the life of a person in cardiac arrest often depends on what happens even before emergency responders arrive on the scene.
“If someone doesn’t start CPR,” he says, “the chance of a successful outcome is very, very small. Without that early intervention – without basic life support – nothing really matters.”
Passaniti recently joined The Wright Center for Community Health, where he is leading an effort to provide various levels of life support training to anyone in the region who wants or needs it, ranging from hospital and health center employees to people with no connection to the medical field.
The Wright Center recently became an American Heart Association (AHA) training site, allowing it to begin delivering important services to the communities it serves in Northeast Pennsylvania. For professionals who are required to get certifications and recertifications, it will provide affordable trainings in Basic Life Support, Heartsaver CPR, Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS), Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS), and Pediatric Emergency Assessment, Recognition and Stabilization (PEARS).
At the American Heart Association training site operated by The Wright Center for Community Health, the aim is to provide life support training to anyone in the region who wants or needs it. In addition to Basic Life Support, there will be courses for professionals who require certification, or recertification, in Advance Cardiovascular Life Support, Pediatric Advanced Life Support and other levels of training.
For beginners, Passaniti will cover topics such as how to identify the signs of sudden cardiac arrest and how to use an automated external defibrillator, the device used to jolt a heart back into rhythm. All trainings will adhere to the AHA’s training site guidelines, which are widely considered the gold standard.
By establishing the new training site, The Wright Center will be able to efficiently certify and recertify its own employees, including physicians, nurses, and other clinicians, while addressing broader community needs.
A well-established AHA training center in Lackawanna County recently ended operations, leaving emergency responders, college students enrolled in health care programs, daycare workers, pharmacists, and others searching for options.
The debut of The Wright Center’s training site also coincides with a surge in public interest in CPR certification programs. A high-profile incident involving NFL player Damar Hamlin, who was resuscitated on the football field during a nationally televised game in January, brought the reality of cardiac arrest into people’s living rooms.
“When it happens in a very public venue such as a Monday Night Football game with millions of people watching, it kind of brings more people to the classroom,” says Passaniti. “They say, ‘Maybe I should learn how to do that.’ Because it can truly make a difference.”
Hamlin, who survived the incident and has since resumed playing, has partnered with the AHA to issue a social media challenge, the “Damar Hamlin #3forHeart CPR Challenge.” The campaign urges participants to do three things: learn “hands-only” CPR, donate to AHA in support of CPR education and training, and encourage three friends to do the same.
Any first-timers who attend Passaniti’s basic-level training courses are coached in not only the skills they need but also the confidence. Many novices are understandably concerned that if they help a stranger in an emergency, they might do more harm than good. Others worry they might expose themselves to legal liability. Passaniti explains there are Good Samaritan laws in each state to protect helpers, and intervention is crucial for these life-and-death situations.
“Anything you do is a positive,” he says. “People may be worried about doing the technique wrong, they’re worried about causing injury. But it’s better to try. Some CPR is better than no CPR.”
More than 350,000 cardiac arrests occur outside of hospital settings each year in the United States, according to the AHA. Yet in only about 40 percent of those cases do the victims get the immediate help they need before the arrival of emergency responders.
CPR, if administered immediately, can double or triple a person’s chance of survival, according to the AHA.
That’s why people like Passaniti are eager to spread training throughout the community, increasing the odds that life-saving help might be close at hand when needed at homes, houses of worship, workplaces, sports fields, and other social spaces.
‘Chain of survival’
Passaniti, 65, seems perfectly suited for his new role at The Wright Center, where he works among many familiar faces.
“I’ve known Carmen for years,” says Sheila Ford, vice president of quality, safety, and enterprise policy compliance and integrity. “All of our doctors know him. For decades our physicians and residents, as well as clinical staff, have received BLS, ACLS and PALS training with Carmen.”
“Carmen, has just been a pillar of the community” she adds, “Our clinicians value his expertise with the American Heart Association’s gold standard for life support certifications. Creating a clinical community gold standard is important for the patients and the communities we serve.”
In 1972, at age 14, he became a junior firefighter for the Dalton Fire Company, where he continues to serve to this day as ambulance captain. In both volunteer and paid capacities, he has devoted decades to protecting lives and property. He served as a paramedic in Lackawanna County during the pioneering days of the profession. In addition to responding to calls, he then became active in managing training programs to properly prepare others who work in the emergency response field throughout Northeast Pennsylvania.
Passaniti now holds the title of director of employee health and continuing medical education coordinator at The Wright Center. His duties include overseeing the health aspects of the new employees’ onboarding requirements and ensuring employees remain up to date on health mandates such as vaccinations.
At age 14, Carmen Passaniti joined the Dalton Fire Company as a junior firefighter. Today, at 65, he continues his track record of volunteer service with the organization as its ambulance chief, helping to train and nurture the next generation of selfless community servants.
He will also spearhead a two-year effort to have The Wright Center’s new training site designated as an AHA training center, a distinction earned by training a certain number of people annually and meeting other standards.
“Carmen is so passionate and committed to it,” adds Ford. “And he’s done this before. This is not a road he hasn’t traveled.”
Passaniti was deeply involved in managing the former Community Life Support ambulance company and the recently closed Commonwealth Health EMS (CHEMS) training center, where he had been clinical manager.
Even as he reaches an age at which many people opt to retire, the West Abington Township resident feels compelled to continue to conduct trainings, so he can teach and inspire younger generations. “It’s something I truly enjoy doing,” Passaniti says.
He also knows that, for some of the people he trains, there will be more at stake than a feeling of accomplishment or a certification. A life will hang in the balance. A fast-acting family member or bystander will step in, use their training, and forge the first link in a so-called “chain of survival” that begins with basic life support and connects to skilled emergency responders and, finally, to hospital professionals.
The outcome, while never certain, can be spectacular.
“Someone is going to see their family again,” says Passaniti. “They’ll leave the hospital neurologically intact and go home with the same quality of life.”
For information about life support training available through The Wright Center for Community Health’s AHA training site, contact Carmen Passaniti at passanitic@TheWrightCenter.org or call 570-335-3307. Training is available in the communities The Wright Center serves in Northeast Pennsylvania.
Maureen Litchman, M.D., the medical director of The Wright Center for Community Health Wilkes-Barre Practice and a board-certified family medicine physician, was recently presented with a Family Medicine Education Consortium (FMEC) award for creative writing in the prose category. She received the award during FMEC’s Annual Meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, on Oct. 13-15.
FMEC seeks to identify and recognize individuals who have demonstrated significant contributions to family medicine and primary care. The award is for her story, “Not Knowing,” which occurred when Dr. Litchman delivered a baby in the Wilkes-Barre General Hospital Emergency Room. The mother had received no prenatal care and, at the time, the hospital had no obstetrics department. Dr. Litchman was among four individuals who were honored in the category.
Maureen Litchman, M.D.,
Dr. Litchman graduated from Hahnemann Medical College and completed her family medicine residency training at United Health and Hospital Services (now The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education Family Medicine Residency Program). She recently earned her master’s degree in creative writing from Wilkes University.
FMEC works to improve health communities by strengthening family medicine, primary care, and medical education. It serves 14 states and the District of Columbia, working with 60 medical school departments of family medicine, 190 family medicine residency programs, and thousands of family physicians, and other health care providers in community settings.
To learn more about The Wright Center for Community Health’s primary and preventive care services and convenient locations, go to TheWrightCenter.org or call 570-230-0019. The Wright Center treats patients of all ages, income levels, and insurance statuses. No patient is turned away for lack of health insurance or an inability to pay. Certain patients may be eligible for the sliding-fee discount program that is based on family size and income.
The Wright Center for Community Health Scranton Practice, 501 S. Washington Ave., will host a Wonderful Women Breast Cancer Support Group program on Wednesday, Nov. 15 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in the auditorium. Family and friends are invited and light refreshments will be served. Special guests include Julie Rutkowski of the Strong and Coura’Jess Foundation and Tiffany Carroll and Kaitlyn Carroll of The Salted Pixie. Dolly Woody, the former director of the Susan G. Komen Foundation of Greater Pennsylvania, will serve as the keynote speaker. The program is free, but you must RSVP by calling Holly Przasnyski at 570-209-3275 or emailing her at przasnyskih@TheWrightCenter.org.
Event organizers include, front row from left, co-chairperson Mary Mararra, The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement Board; co-chairperson Gerri McAndrew, director of development & relations for community outreach, The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education; and committee member Lorraine Lupini, The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement Board; second row, committee member Helayna Szescila, deputy chief governance officer, The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education; committee member Ellen Walko, The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement Board; honorary chairperson Dr. Linda Thomas-Hemak, president and CEO, The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education; committee member Kim Robinson, manager, The Wright Center for Community Health Wilkes-Barre Practice; committee member Holly Przasnyski, Community Health and Patient & Community Engagement boards coordinator and The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement director; and liaison volunteer Dr. Muhammad Waqas, Internal Medicine resident, The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education.
Kara Seitzinger, executive director of public affairs and advisor liaison to The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education’s president and CEO, was named by the Pennsylvania Association of Community Health Centers as the recipient of a 2023 Award for Primary Care Excellence (APEX) in recognition of her work as a community ambassador.
The association annually bestows its APEX awards in 10 categories to recognize the outstanding efforts of dedicated individuals and teams who work or volunteer for Pennsylvania’s community health centers. An APEX represents the pinnacle of service, quality, innovation, and achievement in primary health care. The association awarded two Community Ambassador Awards this year.
Kara Seitzinger
A Scranton resident, Seitzinger received the award on Oct. 11 at the association’s Annual Conference and Clinical Summit in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
“Kara is truly worthy of this prestigious award. I cannot think of anyone who is a stronger advocate for the patients, families, and communities we serve,” said Dr. Linda Thomas-Hemak, president and CEO of The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education. “She embodies the mission of The Wright Center to improve the health and welfare of our communities through inclusive and responsive health services and the sustainable renewal of an inspired, competent workforce that is privileged to serve.
“Thanks to her efforts, our patients and families struggling with food insecurity receive nutritious foods; community members who need warm clothing are given winter garments; and those who need transportation to doctor’s appointments receive travel vouchers. Her monumental public service efforts are honestly hard to quantify, but our communities are healthier and safer because of her reliable and tireless efforts.”
The Community Ambassador Award is “presented to an individual who champions the community health center mission through a steadfast commitment to build relationships, enact change, and promote awareness and bring positive attention to their health center,” according to the association.
Seitzinger works to expand The Wright Center’s visibility and public health impact throughout the region, often identifying and joining forces with mission-aligned community partners to conduct outreach programs that support vulnerable populations and medically underserved communities.
As part of a collaboration with the CDC Foundation, she coordinated with government, business, and nonprofit leaders at the height of the coronavirus pandemic to launch a public health campaign in the Hazleton area to expand access to COVID-19 education, testing, vaccines, and treatment. Later, the campaign also succeeded in delivering CDC-recommended childhood vaccinations to more than 700 school-aged children, enabling their uninterrupted participation in the classroom.
Seitzinger has also played a key role in the planning and execution of fundraising events that allow The Wright Center to provide goods and services to patients and community members in need. For example, the “Road to Recovery” car show in Scranton helps to offset transportation costs for certain individuals who are served by The Wright Center’s Opioid Use Disorder Center of Excellence and Healthy MOMs program so they can get to and from their medical appointments.
Seitzinger often serves as the health center’s point person for high-profile community impact projects, such as sponsoring the region’s annual PrideFest Parade, most recently held in Wilkes-Barre. The Wright Center’s participation in the event helps to raise awareness of its Ryan White HIV Clinic and to reach community members who might otherwise not have the resources needed to seek care.
The Wright Center currently operates 10 primary and preventive care practices in Northeast Pennsylvania, including a mobile medical vehicle called Driving Better Health. Its practices offer integrated whole-person care, meaning patients typically have the convenience of going to a single location to access medical, dental, and behavioral health care, as well as community-based addiction treatment and recovery services. It accepts most major health insurance plans, including Medical Assistance (Medicaid), Medicare, and CHIP, noting that no patient is turned away due to an inability to pay.
