The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services has signed a contract with the members of Pennsylvania’s Consortium of Health Information Exchanges and Findhelp, a closed-loop referral platform vendor, to build a statewide online social care tool called PA Navigate.
WHY IT MATTERS
Pennsylvanians will be able to use the platform to find help for themselves and their families in addition to social service agencies, community-based organizations, government agencies and healthcare providers to help make and track service referral for patient SDOH needs, according to the company’s announcement last week.
Findhelp will work with the Central PA Connect, Clinical Connect HIE, HealthShare Exchange and Keystone Health Information Exchange to build the PA Navigate, with the goal of making it easy to assess patient SDOH needs with privacy and ease and dignity at the point of care.
Healthcare providers will have access to the most complete view of an individual’s social care history and current status, the company said.
“We have built a strong relationship of trust with Pennsylvanians and are excited to work with our new partners to help more residents in need,” said Findhelp founder and CEO Erine Gray in a statement.
Over the past five years more than 750,000 in the state have used the platform, the company said, adding that it is the nation’s largest network of free and low-cost programs that connect people to housing, education and food resources.
Findhelp (formerly Aunt Bertha), which was rated #1 for SDOH networks by KLAS this past year, has worked with more than 600 of America’s largest health plans, hospital systems, government municipalities, educational institutions and cause organizations. Existing customers in Pennsylvania include Penn Medicine, Geisinger, Lehigh Valley Health Network, AmeriHealth Caritas, PA Health and Wellness and Highmark Health.
THE LARGER TREND
Creating a nationwide enterprise architecture for health data that includes clinical, public health and social determinants is a critical need for public health management and pandemic preparedness, according to the Ellison Institute.
Gabriel Seidman, the institute’s director of policy, said that federal data initiatives need public and private partnerships to lead innovation in data sharing in March.
“I keep coming back to social determinants data,” he told HIMSSTV in a discussion about the institute’s recommendations to the federal government.
ON THE RECORD
“We selected Findhelp as our technology partner for PA Navigate because they have the best integration capabilities in this space and are the technology that many healthcare organizations in our state have chosen to work with,” said Bill Marella, vice president of value based care and data analytics of HealthShare Exchange, in a statement.
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: [email protected]
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
Source : Healthcare IT News