Integration of Community Health Workers into Primary Care Health Systems is discussed in a Case Study by the NYU-CUNY Prevention Research Center City University of N.Y. and the NYU School of Medicine. The Case Study points out that it is important to bridge clinical systems with communities and neighborhoods.
One way to achieve this goal, is to engage Community Health Workers (CHW), frontline public health professionals with a close understanding of the communities they serve. CHWs share racial and ethnic backgrounds, culture, language, socioeconomic status, and life experiences. By acting as a bridge between the community and healthcare system, CHWs have the potential to address health disparities and work better with underserved communities.
Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH) https://bswhealth.com, the largest not-for-profit healthcare system located in Dallas Texas, has employed CHWs since 2007, and has a staff of over 60 in various programs.
BSWH considers it is imperative for the CHWs to have access to EHRs as CHWs meet with patients in hospitals to facilitate their transition to the home. The CHW team with access to the hospital’s EHRs is able to follow outpatient plans with the discharging social work team. The CHWs also relay important medical information on patients from their hospital stay to the home EHR.
Also, the Penn Center for CHWs https://chw.upnn.edu established in 2013, is a community-academic health system partnership initiated to improve health in low-income populations through the effective use of CHWs.
Penn Center funded by Penn Medicine has researched how to develop IMPaCT, a standardized, scalable CHW Model of Care. IMPaCT has improved a variety of outcomes including access to primary care, hospital admissions, quality of patient-provider communication, and mental health.
By using IMPaCT, it is possible to use the common platform Home3baseTM for documentation. This custom platform makes it possible to generate reports and integrate the data into EHRs.
The platform also makes it possible to create structured data fields within EHRs. This enables CHWs to document social characteristics on the patient population, provide care management and treatment information to others, or if needed, provide information on unusual circumstances found in the patient’s home.
Go to Google Search and type in Integration of Community Health Workers into Primary Care for the Case Study.