Wagoner Community Hospital (WCH) is a 100-bed medical facility in Wagoner, OK with a wide range of services including a 32-bed mental health unit, pain management, sleep services, general surgery, and a 24-hour emergency room. WCH serves a patient population of approximately 20,000 in rural Oklahoma.
Through a one-year, $200K Planning Grant from HRSA’s Rural Communities Opioid Response Program, WCH, and its partners were able to expand the capacity of rural communities to engage high-risk populations and provide substance use disorder (SUD) and Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) prevention. WCH’s primary partners in the effort included Cherokee Nation Behavioral Health, Creoks Behavioral Health Services, Wagoner Family Service Council, and local nonprofit Reckless Saints of Nowhere. From there, WCH coordinated a Community Needs Assessment and Gap Analysis.
At the conclusion of the one-year planning period, WCH secured an additional $1 million in HRSA funding to implement the planned project. These funds will be used to enhance WCH’s cross-community, multi-sector collaboration with the Cherokee Nation, Muscogee (Creek) Nation, other behavioral health care providers, and community-based organizations in rural Oklahoma's most vulnerable communities.