Lessons Learned: Implementing and Expanding Social Needs Screening Programs in Health Centers - Session 1: Introduction and Level 1: Coming to Consensus

HITEQ Learning Collaborative Series

Is your health center currently in the process of considering, implementing, or revamping a social needs screening program within your EHR or health IT system? Join this learning collaborative to learn about health center promising practices and key considerations to support the successful collection, monitoring, and addressing of social needs data. During the series, participants explored the levels of maturity in the social needs screening implementation process.

The levels of maturity included: 

• Level 1: Coming to Consensus
• Level 2: Implementing a Social Needs Screening Tool
• Level 3: Responding to Positive Screens
• Level 4: Monitoring and Using Data

Participants gained information on concrete strategies and IT solutions that will help to improve internal systems, such as EHR utilization and care team workflows, and increase their capacity to advance individual and population-level health.  The HITEQ Center partnered with the Louisiana Primary Care Association to design this series. Louisiana-based health centers were showcased throughout the series to share their experiences with social needs screening, including successes, challenges, and lessons learned.

Session 1: Introduction & Level 1 - Coming to Consensus
This session will provide an overview of the key drivers for implementing a social needs screening program using health IT, and strategies health centers can use to secure buy-in from leadership and staff.

Topics: Drawing from past change processes, Identifying champions, Primary drivers - identifying the why of social need screening, and Securing staff and leadership buy-in (calculating ROI, pilot programs, training staff, demonstrating efficiency)