3E-referral Solutions from page 19 questions in many of the categories inquire about sensitive and personal aspects of our patients lives and the screening process must be implemented with corresponding sensitivity. E-referral processes have demonstrated value for patients and there is more work to be done from a data analytics perspective to link SDOH screen data sets with outcomes based on clinical data.
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data and put this data on track to be exchanged and protected with appropriate consents and HIPAA compliance (we have minimal ICD-10 “Z codes,” but not enough granularity). One effort is the Gravity Project facilitated by the HL7 standards organization. As is the case with any set of health care data, there are emerging requests to collect, store, and mobilize SDOH data and optimize it through aggregation and analysis for many purposes.
An electronic social needs referral is indeed akin to a prescription.
A small handful of vendors have been active in the national e-referral space such as Aunt Bertha, Healthify, NowPow, UniteUs and a few others. NowPow was the first to establish health care clients in Minnesota (Minneapolis, St. Paul metro), followed by Aunt Bertha. UniteUs has recently announced a partnership with CyncHealth (formerly the Nebraska Health Information Initiative) and is seeking to establish clients in Minnesota. While there are some general similarities in the workflows of these vendor products, each of them has a different approach and price point. Where one may focus on health care and referring to the community, another may start by building a community coalition, then bringing health care providers in as stakeholders.
There is much that can be done by better understanding and addressing the 80% social determinants component of patient health that is influenced and largely determined in the community and outside the boundaries of the 20% determined in the health care arena. Payment models such as ACOs that enable flexibility in how we help patients achieve their best possible health are just one avenue to connecting health care to community and taking advantage of the e-referral solutions that are rapidly being adopted across our state and nation. Reid Haase, MA, is a Senior Healthcare IT Consultant, Practice Facilitator
and works with Quality Improvement at Stratis Health.
Just as there are efforts to enable EMRs to share data, the same need is under discussion in the national conversations around SDOH to standardize
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