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Central Florida Health Care’s Efforts Go Above, Beyond

- TIM CRAIG

AS THE REGION CONTINUES to navigate its way through the country’s health crisis, stories are emerging of people working together to go above and beyond the normal in order to meet the extreme. Central Florida Health Care prides itself on coming up with creative ways to provide care to its patients.

Moving beyond health care

“We have to be ready every day,” says CFHC Health Administrator Carrie Griner. “Every day is uniquely different, so we have to adjust to a new situation every day.”

Those daily adjustments recently included a regular CFHC patient who had been in Lakeland Regional after testing positive for COVID-19 was discharged — only to find out that their landlord had evicted them because of the illness. The CFHC staff found out the patient had been living out of their car.

“This is a senior citizen with continuing health issues,” Griner says. “Now that person finds themselves living out of their car. It became a possibly dangerous situation.”

Griner and her staff immediately sought out a solution. Despite several conversations with local organizations like the Homeless Coalition and the Polk County Health Department, neither could find a local solution.

“Polk County doesn’t have the same resources as some of the larger metropolitan areas nearby,” Griner says. “We needed a place to go to make the patient more comfortable, a place to manage the patient’s condition better than their car.”