Melissa Wendland brings three decades of health care experience to her work as Common Ground Health’s director of strategic initiatives. An accomplished facilitator, Wendland has led numerous community wide leadership tables, including Common Ground’s current Regional Health Care Workforce Consortium. In 2012, she helped coordinated the successful submission of a $26.6 million clinical innovation grant for the Finger Lakes region. Funded by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, the grant helped to reduce hospital admissions and ED visits by improving primary care and integrating community services.

In 2011, Wendland led a team of hospitals and home care agencies on behalf of the community to receive a $3.2 million award from CMS that worked to improve care transitions for high risk Medicare beneficiaries.

Wendland is known for her ability to build and maintain trusting and collaborative relationships among a variety of community partners.

Melissa Wendland has presented at the European Association for Communication in Healthcare, the American Association for Communication in Healthcare, and the Annual Academy Health Research meeting in Washington. She conducted webinars for IPRO and Dorland Health. Melissa’s qualitative research publications include “Soliciting Patients Goals for Care on Hospital Discharge: The Gateway to Shared Decision Making” in Quality in Primary Care, 2019 and “The Impact of a Program in Mindful Communication on Primary Care Physicians,” in the Journal of Academic Medicine, 2012.