We are honored to announce national recognition for CCC’s own Jordan Wilhelms, Director of Recuperative Care Program (RCP).
Selected from applicants across the country, last month, Jordan received the Willie J. Mackey Award from the National Health Care for the Homeless Council. This award recognizes an individual who has made a profound impact on their community through the delivery or advancement of medical respite care.
This content block does not have a preview.
Jordan has been the leader of CCC’s Recuperative Care Program since 2012, serving medical respite operations, offshoot services and other programs in an evolving leadership capacity. “This award means so much to me because it’s an absolute celebration of the success of our community in supporting and nurturing the powerful form of service that is RCP,” says Jordan. “It’s a recognition of the profound success of our staff, the many supporters all over CCC who connect people with care at RCP and help our system work, and the many community partners who collaborate with us every day. I also have such respect for the award’s namesake, the late Willie J. Mackey, a pioneering advocate for the need for medical respite care nationwide. I am grateful that we are able to follow the trail that he—and many others—have blazed in advancing medical respite care.”
“Jordan is a remarkable leader who demonstrates incredible humanity for both clients and his team of respite care providers,” says Dr. Andy Mendenhall, President and CEO. “He also possesses a deep understanding and desire to develop the individuals who work for him. It’s a remarkable trait in a leader, to inspire a large team of people to all row in the same direction and to do so in the face of adversity for the clients, as well as in an ecosystem that doesn’t efficiently meet their needs.”
CCC is honored by Jordan’s compassion, commitment to service and guidance of this critical program that has helped thousands of individuals heal with dignity.
Congratulations Jordan!
This content block does not have a preview.
This content block does not have a preview.
As part of the award, we had to answer a few questions about Jordan’s work with CCC’s RCP program. Below are the submission answers if you’d like to learn more about his outstanding work.
Describe the nominees’ outstanding contributions to the field of medical respite care.
Jordan has been the leader of CCC’s Recuperative Care Program since 2012, serving medical respite operations, offshoot services and sub-programs in an evolving leadership capacity. Prior to this, Jordan worked in respite care since 2010 and in direct service to vulnerable populations since 2002. He has been instrumental in growing RCP from a small operation embedded within a housing facility to a now-standalone program that is a major intersection in the community’s continuum of care. In 2024, CCC helped 15,991 people (unduplicated number) experiencing or at risk for homelessness with affordable and supportive housing, integrated health services, addiction recovery and employment assistance, and RCP serves as one of the main entry points to the continuum.
Jordan has led three major expansions and relocations of RCP, operating medical respite for the community through four distinct eras, including the development of a new facility and the acquisition of property to expand capacity. Respite care under his leadership has undergone dramatic evolution in services offered, staffing model, built environment, capacity, culture, and amenities. He has worked to expand the medical respite funding model to include each of the region’s Medicaid payors, and the spectrum of regional hospitals and governmental agencies. Jordan has worked to develop these partnerships to position RCP staff in their operation at the nexus of many of the metro area’s health systems, coordinated care organizations, and community-based care entities.
While he has achieved this success in community organization of respite care support, many of his proudest accomplishments have been the development and growth of services and quality within the respite care model and program. He has overseen the expansion of RCP’s clinical resources, established a new primary care clinic location to serve the respite care population, improved internal practices through development of a non-judgmental culture of quality improvement, steadily expanded the staffing model to be able to offer more tailored and robust support to participants, and built a caring environment in which staff often treat each other like family. Since joining RCP, RCP has served thousands of individuals, achieving impressive results: over 65% resolved their acute medical condition, over 90% engaged with a primary care provider upon program exit and over 60% transitioned into stable housing.
Jordan has always looked for opportunities to engage in research related to respite care, out of his passionate belief in the need for, and the success of, the model. He has positioned RCP to participate in several distinct research studies, including a recent project analysis completed at CCC with the support of Kaiser Permanente’s Foundation and the National Institute for Medical Respite Care, as well as additional local experts. This project aimed to provide analysis of RCP’s program success, the utility of specific components of the RCP access model and additions to the collective evidence base demonstrating the impact of respite care. Through propensity scoring and nearest neighbor matching, the team was able to demonstrate that RCP produced health system cost savings of $6,759 per enrollee, on average, due in part to a reduction of hospital readmissions and emergency department visits.
Considered alongside increased primary care engagement and housing rates, these results demonstrate immediate returns and long-term benefits of investing in respite programs. Jordan is working with partners in CCC’s Office of Integration and Innovation to build upon the work and further understand the fractal impact of respite care, seeing impacts at the health systems, population health, and individual care level.
Provide one or two examples that illustrate the creative and visionary work undertaken by the nominee that impacts the lives of people in their community experiencing homelessness.
Jordan has implemented several creative approaches designed to improve outcomes of those experiencing homelessness and to build upon previous interpretations of the respite care model.
One of the primary objectives Jordan has worked towards in his leadership of Recuperative Care has been the expansion of access for people who need it. Jordan has pushed this work towards expansion of access through many distinct areas of focus:
- Development of improved shared understanding of the value of medical respite care in the community – to help more people be identified as eligible for care.
- Development of improved awareness, alongside internal and external partners, of structural bias that may be resulting in missed opportunities to identify people for respite care and missed opportunities to provide good medical care itself.
- Widening the perception of what makes someone a “good fit” medically for respite care:
- Creation of a framework for enrolling, and receiving Medicaid plan payment for, more participants with chronic health conditions.
- Development of a model for articulation of medical need for respite care that includes both medical and social vulnerability factors and provides an opportunity for improvements in equitability of access.
- Creation of non-traditional referral pathways outside of hospital settings, including outpatient clinics, skilled nursing facilities, primary care locations and other community-based settings.
- Nurturing community understanding of the value of respite care as a pre-emptive, need-based intervention that can prevent future hospitalization rather than solely as a post-hospitalization intervention.
Jordan’s investment in each of these areas have produced steady growth in access to respite care for our community. Collectively, Jordan’s tireless carrying out of this work has resulted in continual growth in bed capacity, which will continue for RCP later this year after a new construction project, growth in clinical and non-clinical support for every respite care participant, and 700% growth in the medical respite operations budget since stepping into leadership of the service. Locally, RCP is a deeply respected team that is seen by community partners as responsive, attentive, and caring.
Provide one or two examples that illustrate significant community collaborations that resulted in the advancement of medical respite care.
Jordan has worked to advance a regional approach to medical respite care, providing technical assistance to both community-based organizations and governmental entities in support of collaborative efforts towards establishment of a system of respite care. Over the last two years he has worked with all three neighboring counties in supporting the development of their respite services and is supporting early conversations with an objective of centralizing the deployment of respite care for the broader community with the support of regional government.
He has led a design process that engaged principal community stakeholders in the mapping of enhanced medical respite concepts for additional populations, with several service and staffing model options now implementation-ready.
He has engaged partner hospitals and CCOs in socialization of RCP’s Risk Tiering Rubric as an eligibility tool for prospective clients and as a communication mechanism for discussion of medical/social necessity for care, nurturing a framework for intentionally and equitably increasing the number of people eligible for care.
He has worked with CCC’s public policy team to assert positions through testimony on prospective legislation, provided consultative support to governmental bodies in development of operational frameworks for new policy, and pushed legislators themselves to understand and invest in respite care.
He has actively participated in respite care work within the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council and the National Institute for Medical Respite Care’s Respite Care Providers Network, having served two terms on RCPN’s Steering Committee and currently acting as an RCPN Emeritus Board Member.
Describe how this individual goes above and beyond what is expected of them.
Jordan has continuously and consciously made himself available to people all over the continent in their efforts to learn about medical respite and create their own models within their own communities. While this open and welcoming stance has afforded many burgeoning programs technical and emotional support that has been integral to the expansion of respite care, Jordan always prioritizes direct support for his tremendous team as the difficulty of the work requires. Jordan holds space for community partners, close and distant colleagues, and engages in the challenging work of medical respite care with honesty, joy, and realism.
Jordan has always communicated that it is part of his job, and part of medical respite itself, to engage in both participant-level and system-level advocacy and change. That he takes accountability for effecting change in health systems economics affecting vulnerable neighbors; that he seeks opportunities to leverage medical respite operations for research that advances structural codification of care for vulnerable neighbors; that he takes pride in remaining as barrier free as possible in connecting vulnerable neighbors with help; that he consistently invites both challenges and risk into his work: these are all beyond the standard.
