Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Acting Secretary Visits The Wright Center

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Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Acting Secretary Dr. Val Arkoosh, third from right, recently visited The Wright for Community Health Wilkes-Barre Practice as part of a statewide awareness-raising campaign about changes to Medicaid and CHIP renewal requirements. State Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, center, also offered remarks during the May 16 news conference. Attendees from The Wright Center included, from left, Laura Spadaro, vice president of primary care and public health policy; Scott Koerwer, executive vice president and chief administrative officer; Sheila Ford, associate vice president of clinical quality and patient safety; Nora Dillon, director of government relations; and Dr. Jignesh Sheth, chief medical officer, and senior vice president.

Shapiro Administration Working with Community Health Centers to Help All Pennsylvanians Amid Major Federal Changes to Medicaid Renewals

Wilkes- Barre, PA – Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS) Acting Secretary Dr. Val Arkoosh joined representatives from The Wright Center for Community Health on May 16 to highlight how the Shapiro Administration, Pennie, and community organizations are collaborating to support Pennsylvanians through federal changes to Medicaid and CHIP renewal requirements so they can protect their health and stay covered.

“Everyone deserves the dignity and peace of mind of having access to affordable, high-quality, local health care and knowing they can go to the doctor when they need it. DHS’ goal throughout the renewal process is to make sure that all Pennsylvanians stay covered,” said Acting Secretary Arkoosh. “I urge all Pennsylvanians who get their health coverage through the state to do a few things right now so that your renewal goes smoothly: make sure your contact information is up-to-date with DHS, check your renewal date so that you are ready to renew when the time comes, and complete your renewal by the deadline when it’s your turn to renew.”

The federal public health emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic allowed for individuals to remain enrolled in Medicaid even if they became ineligible, except in certain circumstances. This is also known as the Medicaid continuous coverage requirement. A federal law ended the continuous coverage requirement on March 31, 2023. Now, all Pennsylvanians receiving Medicaid or CHIP must once again complete their annual renewal when it is due to determine if they are still eligible. No one will lose Medicaid or CHIP coverage without first having an opportunity to renew their coverage or update their information.

Pennsylvanians can update their contact information, report changes in their personal circumstances, and check their renewal date:
Online at www.dhs.pa.gov/COMPASS
Via the free myCOMPASS PA mobile app
By calling 1-877-395-8930 (215-560-7226 if they live in Philadelphia)


Renewals will be completed over 12 months at a person’s usual time of renewal; renewals due in April 2023 will be the first to be affected by the end of continuous coverage. If a person is found ineligible for coverage or does not complete their renewal on time, their Medicaid coverage will end. Pennsylvanians who are no longer eligible for Medicaid will be referred to other sources of affordable medical coverage, like CHIP and Pennie, so they have no lapse in quality, affordable health care.

A Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike, The Wright Center for Community Health’s patient-centered medical home is an essential community provider of primary and preventive health services. It is also 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, and serve more than 40,000 unique patients annually. The Wright Center’s network of practices ensures everyone in the service area has access to integrated, high-quality, compassionate, affordable health services regardless of their insurance status, ZIP code, or ability to pay.

The Wright Center for Community Health is affiliated with The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education and serves as the cornerstone service provider in ambulatory whole-person care within The Wright Center’s Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education Safety-Net Consortium. Together with their community partners, The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education train primary care residents and fellows in a community-based, needs-responsive, interprofessional workforce development model. This work advances their shared mission to improve the health and welfare of their communities by providing whole-person primary health services.

“The flexibilities provided through the public health emergency successfully increased enrollment in Pennsylvania’s Medicaid and CHIP programs during the public health emergency,” said Dr. Linda Thomas-Hemak, president and CEO of The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education. “These critically important government-sponsored relief initiatives undeniably saved the lives of many vulnerable and historically underserved patients by removing barriers to health care access.”

“The Wright Center for Community Health’s dedicated provider teams began educating our patients, families, and the communities we serve in July 2022 about the anticipated changes for Medicaid and CHIP program eligibility, enrollment, and renewal,” said Thomas-Hemak (nearly 40 people have received direct assistance from The Wright Center with Medicaid or CHIP applications since April 1, 2023). “Our enrollment staff and community health workers are an invaluable resource for anyone who needs assistance assessing their eligibility and applying for Medicaid or CHIP. They will also assist with enrollment in Medicare low-income subsidy programs or a marketplace insurance plan.”

To learn more about Medicaid and CHIP renewals and access educational resources, visit www.dhs.pa.gov/staycovered.

For more information on health insurance options available to Pennsylvanians, visit www.pa.gov/healthcare.

Contact: Brandon Cwalina, [email protected]

New dentist joins The Wright Center for Community Health practices in Northeast Pennsylvania

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Dr. Ryan Rebar, a general practice dentist, has joined The Wright Center for Community Health and is accepting new patients of all ages.

Rebar will initially see patients at the Scranton Practice, 501 S. Washington Ave. Later in the year, he will staff a weekly pop-up dental clinic at the new Wilkes-Barre Practice, 169 N. Pennsylvania Ave., and provide care at the Mid Valley Practice, 5 S. Washington Ave., Jermyn, and Scranton Practice.

Dr. Ryan Rebar

The Wright Center provides affordable, comprehensive dental services, including routine check-ups and cleanings, fluoride treatments, fillings, X-rays, oral cancer screenings, extractions, emergency services, and denture care.

The nonprofit health center accepts most dental insurances, including Delta Dental, Guardian, United Concordia, and Medical Assistance (aka Medicaid). To ensure high-quality oral care is available to everyone, The Wright Center offers a sliding-fee discount program to individuals who qualify based on Federal Poverty Guidelines that take into account family size and income. No patient is turned away due to an inability to pay.

A Lackawanna County native, Rebar is a graduate of Mid Valley High School and the University of Scranton. He received his Doctor of Medicine in Dentistry from the Temple University Kornberg School of Dentistry, the second-oldest dental school in the United States.

Since 2019, the South Abington Township resident has worked at private practices in the Scranton area.

The Wright Center is a Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike, a designation granted by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency of the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

The Wright Center operates nine primary care practices in the region, including a mobile medical vehicle called Driving Better Health. Its practices offer integrated care, meaning patients typically have the convenience of going to a single location to access dental, medical, and behavioral health care, as well as community-based addiction treatment and recovery services. 

Pediatrician joins the care team at The Wright Center for Community Health Wilkes-Barre Practice

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Dr. Alberto Marante, a board-certified pediatrician, is accepting new patients at The Wright Center for Community Health’s recently opened primary and preventive care practice in downtown Wilkes-Barre.

Dr. Marante, a highly experienced pediatric hospitalist, joined The Wright Center in 2019 and previously had been based in Scranton. He will treat infants, children, and adolescents.

The Wright Center for Community Health provides primary and specialty care for children of all ages, from newborn check-ups and wellness visits to vaccinations, school physicals, and overall anticipatory guidance through a child’s developmental stages.

Dr. Alberto Marante

Dr. Marante will continue to serve as pediatric physician faculty for The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education, assisting in the training of physicians who are completing its residency and fellowship programs. He also will be involved in the education and professional development of medical school students and interprofessional health learners based at The Wright Center’s clinical locations and its partner training sites.

Dr. Marante, a Cuban native who attended high school in Illinois, earned his medical degree in 1981 at Universidad CETEC in the Dominican Republic. He completed his residency in pediatrics at the University of South Florida School of Medicine in Tampa and his fellowship in pediatric critical care at the University of Florida’s program in Jacksonville.

The Wright Center for Community Health was designated a Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike in 2019. It provides affordable, nondiscriminatory, high-quality health care to patients of all ages, income levels, and insurance statuses at its network of nine primary care practices in Northeast Pennsylvania. Its locations in Lackawanna, Luzerne, and Wayne counties offer integrated primary care, so patients typically have the convenience of going to one site to access medical, dental, and behavioral and mental health care, plus addiction and recovery treatment and other supportive services.

For this family, organ donation harvests comfort from tragedy

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Lackawanna County mother recalls day she donated son’s eyes to Gift of Life program

On July 3, 2020, Lisa Barrett, director of The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education’s 340B program, received an excited text message from her 19-year-old son, Jake. He said that, after work, he was going to pick up his first side-by-side all-terrain vehicle and wanted to take his mom for a ride on it.

Jake Barrett

An hour later, Barrett received a call of a very different sort.

“It was a very hot day,” recalls Barrett, a Scott Twp., Lackawanna County resident. “I got a call from Jake’s work. They told me he was having difficulty breathing and an ambulance was taking him to the hospital. I wasn’t that worried. How bad could it be? He was only 19. So, I jumped up and headed to the hospital just thinking maybe the heat got to him.”

At the hospital, her heart sank as staff asked her to sit and wait for the chaplain. “That’s when I knew,” Barrett says. “And I just lost it.”

Jake had died from sudden cardiac death (SCD),  a rare condition that occurs when a heart suddenly stops beating, unlike a heart attack that happens due to a blockage. “The whys and hows will probably never be answered,” said Lisa, recalling the tragic day to raise awareness for PA Donor Day on Aug. 1. “My life forever changed, and I will be forever waiting to be with him again.”

Despite her grief, Barrett answered her phone when the Gift of Life called. “They wanted to know if we would be willing to donate Jake’s corneas. As a young child, I watched my parents make a gift of life donation when my brother passed away. I knew he had saved lives and that it was a wonderful thing for my family,” she says. 

“So, I thought, if Jake’s beautiful blue eyes could open up the world for someone else to see through, he would want that. That’s the kind of person he was. He enjoyed life to the fullest and spent hours outdoors enjoying everything that nature had to show him.” 

Within a week, Barrett received two letters from grateful organ recipients, one a young man and the other an older woman. Both had their vision restored and could now see through Jake’s eyes. The knowledge that a little bit of Jake lived on comforted his mother, even as she coped with her own heartbreak.

“I believe we can all make the world a better place,” Barrett says. “We all have gifts to give. And I believe in organ donation – it’s the last and best gift anyone can offer.”  

Son and mother, Jake and Lisa Barrett, share a special moment after a football game.

Donate Life PA will conduct its fourth annual PA Donor Day on Aug. 1 to help raise awareness and increase organ donor registrations. More than 7,000 Pennsylvanians are waiting for life-saving transplants. Donate Life America also celebrates National Donate Life Month each April. For more information about organ donations and how to become an organ donor, visit the PA Donate Life website or the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation website at dmv.pa.gov.

Carbondale couple always grateful for the Gift of Life

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Dombroskys share their story of organ donation for PA Donor Day on Aug. 1.

In the fall of 2013, Steve Dombrosky was out of breath seemingly all the time. A previously active 57-year-old, he struggled to get out of bed and go to his job as an electronics technician at the Tobyhanna Army Depot. His symptoms were not much better at work.

“It was a chore just to go to the restroom,” he recalls. “By the time I got back, I was almost gasping for air. I wasn’t walking; I was shuffling my feet.

Dombrosky and his wife, Pam, who’d spent 18 years working as a registered nurse, knew something wasn’t right. An initial doctor’s examination revealed a fatty liver diagnosis. After further testing, he was diagnosed with NASH: Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. NASH is the most severe form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and is closely related to obesity, pre-diabetes, and diabetes.

Steve and Pam Dombrosky are strong advocates for organ and tissue donations after they experienced the gift of life. In 2018, he received a lifesaving liver transplant due to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis disease. Today, the couple is living life to the fullest, as exhibited in this photo at a recent wedding.

As the disease progressed, he experienced internal bleeding resulting in a dangerously low blood count. “I had many blood and iron transfusions. We were always running somewhere for treatments,” he said. 

He would gain nearly 25 pounds each time his body retained fluids, making everyday tasks almost impossible to complete. During one hospital visit, doctors removed eight two-liter bottles of fluid from his abdomen. In April 2018, he was placed on the liver transplant list during a 15-day stay at Geisinger Health System in Danville.

“I fought it for five years. You have to be really sick to get on a transplant list. You have to be on the edge of saying goodbye before you’re put on a list,” he said. 

Steve was placed on the transplant list and sent home on a Thursday. The next day he received a call with incredible news: They had a liver for him. 

“I was coming home, and he called me, and he was crying,” Pam recalled. “I said, ‘why are you crying?’ and he just kept saying, ‘I got a liver, I got a liver.’ We could not believe how quick it was.”

The donor was a 24-year-old man who had chosen to be an organ donor. That man’s decision saved the lives of many people. It’s something the Dombroskys will never forget.

“We cried and cried for him; we grieved for him every day,” Pam said, overcome with emotion. “People need to become organ donors. There’s not much to it, just checking a box on your driver’s license.”

Steve wasn’t the first person on the list for the transplant. The first patient was too sick for the operation, and the second patient refused it due to the possibility of a hepatitis infection due to the donor’s age. Doctors explained to Steve that the chance of infection was minimal and that they were prepared to treat him for hepatitis if needed.

“People don’t get the chance that I got. I’ve always been sort of a gambler. I knew this was my shot. If I say no, I’m going to be a goner,” he said. “My name is not going to come back around on that list before I’ve passed away. There are days I feel 24 years old again, and I believe that’s from our donor.”

The Dombroskys encourage everyone to become organ donors. 

“My thinking is, when the good Lord comes for you, he doesn’t want your body; he’s only coming for your soul,” said Steve. “So why not give the gift of life? If I could give someone eyesight, a heart, a kidney, or a skin graft, then there’s a part of me still living, and I think that’s just fantastic.”

Steve and Pam are both grateful to the donor and his family, as well as all of the medical professionals and organizations that have helped them on this journey. 

They were among the first recipients of monetary support from The Cody Barrasse Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by the family and friends of Cody Barrasse, a 22-year-old Moosic resident who died after being struck by a car. Barrasse was an organ donor; eight individuals received his life-saving organs. The foundation helps to offset the costs that many organ donor recipients face and supports a scholarship in his name at Scranton Preparatory School.

Steve and Pam Dombrosky are grateful for the gift of life after Steve received a lifesaving liver transplant in 2018 due to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis disease. The couple received support from The Cody Barrasse memorial Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps to offset the costs of organ transplantation.

Steve, now 62, has combined his passion for cars with a part-time job, working for a friend with a small automotive dealership. He takes care of mostly everything around their home, including having dinner ready when Pam comes home from her job in the accounting department at The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education in Scranton, where she started working during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Everyone has been wonderful – at CMC, in Danville, and here at The Wright Center,” said Pam. “When I read the email (at The Wright Center) about Organ Donor Awareness Month, I wanted to share our story.”

For anyone unsure of becoming an organ donor, Steve has one thing to say: “You can consider yourself a hero; you gave a better life to someone else, and that says a lot about who you are. It’s a never-ending battle for these people waiting on transplant lists, and you can help in so many ways,” he said.

For more information about organ donations and how to become an organ donor, visit the PA Donate Life website or the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT).

The Wright Center to support national health objectives as a newly designated Healthy People 2030 Champion

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The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education have recently been designated by an office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a Healthy People 2030 Champion.

The official recognition was made by the federal Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP) and affirms The Wright Center’s commitment to promoting the nation’s efforts to improve the health and well-being of all people.

Laura Spadaro

“We’re delighted to be recognized as champions of the Healthy People 2030 initiative and its framework for achieving a healthier society by 2030,” said Laura Spadaro, vice president of primary care and public health policy at The Wright Center. “Our nonprofit enterprise’s activities are in full alignment with the vision behind the Healthy People campaign, which is for all people to achieve their full potential for health and well-being across the lifespan.”

The initiative, updated each decade, sets data-driven national objectives in a range of categories, including health conditions (such as dementias, diabetes, and respiratory disease), health behaviors, and special populations.

In total, the initiative tracks 358 core objectives. One objective, for example, is to reduce current tobacco use among the adult population from 21.3% to 17.4% or below. Proponents of this goal note that tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States.

“ODPHP is thrilled to recognize The Wright Center for its work to support the Healthy People 2030 vision,” said Rear Admiral Paul Reed, M.D., ODPHP director. “Only by collaborating with partners nationwide can we achieve Health People 2030’s overarching goals and objectives.”

The Healthy People initiative began in 1979 when U.S. Surgeon General Julius Richmond issued the landmark report, “Healthy People: The Surgeon General’s Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.”

Healthy People 2030 is the fifth iteration of the initiative. It builds on the knowledge gained and lessons learned to address the latest public health priorities.

Applicants are selected to become Healthy People 2030 Champions if they have a demonstrated interest in and experience with disease prevention, health promotion, health literacy, or well-being.

Upon acceptance, each champion is able to display a trademarked digital badge on its website and social media channels. Champions also receive information, tools, and resources to help them promote the initiative among their networks. 

HP2030 Champion badge

As a Healthy People 2030 Champion, The Wright Center joins the ranks of an array of public and private organizations that impact health outcomes at the state, tribal, and local levels.

Current champions include the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, the Council on Black Health, the Health Care Improvement Foundation, the National Kidney Foundation, the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers, Trust for America’s Health, and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

To learn more about Healthy People 2030, visit health.gov/healthypeople.

Healthy People 2030 Champion is a service mark of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Used with permission. 
Participation by The Wright Center for Community Health does not imply endorsement by HHS/ODPHP.