The Care Model Hospitals Can’t Ignore: Sinai Chicago’s Community Health Worker Playbook

What if the most effective care model isn’t built inside the hospital at all?

This episode features the opening presentation from the recent Home Care Innovation Summit, a half-day virtual summit produced by Bright Spots Ventures in partnership with TytoCare, focused on how leading organizations are redesigning care to reach patients where they are.

Kelly McCabe, Director of Community Health Innovations, Sinai Chicago and the Sinai Urban Health Institute (SUHI) shares a practical, equity-driven model: clinically integrating community health workers (CHWs) into care delivery to bridge the gap between hospital, home, and community.

She’s joined briefly by Jeanette Avila, Manager of Community Health Innovations at SUHI offering a frontline perspective on what this model looks like in practice and how it builds trust with patients day-to-day.

Serving one of the most complex patient populations in the country, with roughly 90% uninsured or covered by Medicare/Medicaid, Sinai Chicago has built a model that doesn’t just acknowledge social needs, but operationalizes them. 

You’ll hear how Sinai Chicago:

• Integrates community health workers directly into clinical teams, not as an add-on, but as core infrastructure

• Extends care beyond hospital walls through home visits and community-based engagement

• Tracks social determinants and community interactions to shape real-time interventions

• Builds trust with patients in underserved neighborhoods through culturally aligned care

• Uses a hybrid model of in-person outreach and centralized coordination to improve outcomes while reducing burnout 

Key topics covered:

• Why community health workers are essential, not optional, for high-need populations

• Turning social determinants from “insight” into actionable care interventions

• How to operationalize a community-based care model inside a hospital system

• The role of trust, proximity, and lived experience in improving engagement

• Blending home-based care with clinical oversight to scale impact

If you’re a health system leader, population health executive, or payer/provider partner working to close equity gaps and deliver care beyond traditional settings, this is a real-world blueprint for making it work.

Presentation Link: https://www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Kelly-McCabe_Sinai-Chicago_2.19.26.pdf 

About Our Presenters:
https://www.sinaichicago.org/en/suhi/suhi-staff/

Thank You to Our Episode Partner, TytoCare:

TytoCare enables health systems and plans to deliver high-quality remote exams anytime, anywhere. Their FDA-cleared devices and AI-powered diagnostic platform support virtual specialty care, school-based programs, and home health models—reducing unnecessary ED visits and improving patient experience.

To learn more, visit tytocare.com.

Schedule a Meeting with a Senior Leader at TytoCare:

To explore how TytoCare can help your organization expand virtual specialty access and improve care coordination, reach out to [email protected]  to schedule a meeting.

About Bright Spots Ventures:

Bright Spots Ventures is a healthcare strategy and engagement company that creates content, communities, and connections to accelerate innovation.
We help healthcare leaders discover what’s working, and how to scale it. By bringing together health plan, hospital, and solution leaders, we facilitate the exchange of ideas that lead to measurable impact. Through our podcast, executive councils, private events, and go-to-market strategy work, we surface and amplify the “bright spots” in healthcare, proven innovations others can learn from and replicate. At our core, we exist to create trusted relationships that make real progress possible. Visit our website at www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com.