Our Initiatives

Certain social determinants of health—including poverty, poor nutrition, domestic violence, and lack of access to proper healthcare—can be the predominant influence on a person’s health and well-being and can lead to substance abuse, chronic illness, criminal activity, and homelessness in our adult population and poor school performance, injury, and suicide for our youth.

The impact of these factors can be clearly seen in our community. Just one example: As discussed in the 2017-2019 Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) conducted by CHRISTUS St. Vincent in collaboration with many local partners, Santa Fe and northern New Mexico rank near the top of the list in the U.S. for per-capita drug-related deaths, youth and adult suicide, and alcohol dependence.

While there are many urgent health challenges facing our community, Anchorum will seek to create impact investments that address two of the "Super Priorities" identified in the 2017-2019 Community Health Implementation Plan (or CHIP, the follow-up report to CHNA):

1. Behavioral Health Conditions—with the goal of reducing alcohol and drug-related deaths, preventing youth and adult suicides, and expanded care for some of the most vulnerable individuals in our community who are heavily impacted by social determinants of health, and may have co-occurring mental illnesses, homelessness, and addiction.
2. Senior Health and Wellness—including the issues of fall-related injuries, access to quality rehabilitation and skilled nursing facilities, support for more in-home care for seniors, and a reduction in the community's elder abuse cases.

Anchorum's goal is to increase access to services for these often-underserved populations, thereby reducing vulnerability to adverse social determinants. As one example, among the initiatives currently being considered for impact investment is the creation of a state-of-the-art transitional rehabilitation center.

We are playing an active, collaborative role in providing expanded access to the behavioral health continuum of care—an issue that has reached crisis level locally and nationally. As an organization at the forefront of innovative technology, we plan to augment in-person health services with telehealth appointments utilizing the most advanced, secure technology so that patients can be seen, diagnosed, and treated quickly and effectively in a non-hospital setting—a critical service for residents in the community's more remote northern locations. In our overarching focus on increasing patient access, we are also looking at solutions for patient transportation assistance to and from healthcare providers.

With impact investments such as these, Anchorum can reduce the negative effects of social determinants in these populations, improve access, and help stabilize the community's well-being.

We are interested in maximizing the efficacy of the community’s physical health and wellness infrastructure—our existing facilities where care is being offered—and in leading efforts to invest and build new and advanced facilities for the community. Our model is to strategically acquire (or develop) facilities through collaborative impact investment with our philanthropic investment partners; then seek a high-quality partner to manage and operate within that space. The ultimate goal is an expanded the continuum of care in our region, elevate health outcomes for our community, and broaden healthcare access to the everyone, including the most vulnerable of our citizens.

Examples of our current physical infrastructure initiatives:

• Along with local impact investors, Anchorum owns the New Mexico Cancer Center, a high quality, free-standing cancer treatment facility in Santa Fe and one of the leading cancer care centers in the state.
• Anchorum developed and built the largest urgent-care clinic on Santa Fe’s Southside area.
• In collaboration with our partner, CHRISTUS Health, we are currently developing the first free-standing Emergency Department in northern New Mexico, also located on Santa Fe’s Southside.
• Also in collaboration with CHRISTUS Health, we have invested in the creation of the Frost Pavilion and “the private room initiative” at CHRISTUS St. Vincent Regional Medical Center to ensure that all 250 rooms within the facility are private and have the newest technology.
• We were instrumental in ensuring that CHRISTUS St. Vincent hospital and its Medical Group clinics, along with other local providers, transitioned to the Electronic Health Record system “Epic Platform.” This platform uniformity serves to improve information access and enables patients’ Electronic Health Records to be shared between laboratories and caregivers as needed, greatly enhancing coordination of care for patients across providers and locations.