A number of studies are looking at social services and community support programs and whether they are meeting the needs of local residents. This topic was highlighted at a briefing held November 5th at the National Press Club presenting the views of the authors published in the November issue of Health Affairs www.healthaffairs.org.
The Health Affairs November issue focuses on communities and the need to address the consequences of poverty. This requires communities and developers to make improvements, in housing, economic opportunities, plus provide more services to improve population health in individual communities.
Bethany Rogerson, Senior Associate at the Pew Charitable Trusts www.pewtrusts.org as an author, presented ideas from the article “A Simplified Framework for Incorporating Health into Community Development Initiatives”.
She explained that it is important for the fields of community development and public health to collaborate to offer the best opportunities to the communities they serve. Tools and metrics along with planning and financing information are needed along with health data to effectively work with new community development projects and programs.
A Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is commonly used to incorporate health in decisions made outside the health sector. She said that in order to perform a HIA, collaborators must use many data sources and analytic methods to build and strengthen cross-sector collaborations. HIAs are very important to use to effectively share data, engage stakeholders, identify common goals, and develop practical approaches when collaborating on projects.
Another article in the publication, “Hennepin Health: A Safety-Net ACO for the Expanded Medicaid Population” authored by Ross Owen Deputy Director for Hennepin Health www.hennepin.us operating as a county-based safety-net ACO in Minnesota. The ACO was created through a partnership with the Hennepin County Human Services and Public Health Department, Hennepin County Medical Center, NorthPoint Health, and Metropolitan Health Plan.
The partnership’s aim is to redesign the healthcare workforce to better coordinate the physical, behavioral, social, and economic dimensions of care for an expanded community of Medicaid beneficiaries.
Hennepin Health partners have greatly invested in health IT. The priority is to ensure consistent documentation in a unified EHR shared by clinical and social service providers and Metropolitan Health Plan staff.
However, integrating information on both medical, behavioral, and social service interventions can be challenging. In some cases, social service providers had to use a separate electronic system to document interventions while accessing medical and behavioral care plans in the EHR. Also, the authors found that uncertainty about data privacy regulations has proved to be a barrier to giving providers access to information.
Healthcare data analysts, data architects, data developers, and EHR analysts, have worked with Hennepin Health to create electronic dashboards that display patient information tailored to the type of provider through the EHR. Hennepin Health has also built an integrated data warehouse for analytics and reporting that includes health plan claims and enrollment data, EHR data, and social service records.