Lessons Learned: Implementing and Expanding Social Needs Screening Programs in Health Centers - Session 2:Level 2: Implementing a Social Needs Screening Tool

HITEQ Learning Collaborative Series

The HITEQ Center put on 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. Participants gained information on concrete strategies and IT solutions that helped to improve internal systems, such as EHR utilization and care team workflows, and increase their capacity to advance individual and population-level health. Health center exemplars were showcased.

The levels of maturity include: 

• 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

Session 2: Level 2: Implementing a Social Needs Screening Tool

During this session, participants uncovered ways to evaluate and refine their EHRs and workflows to establish a solid foundation to support consistent and standardized social needs data collection. 

Topics included: Iterative development process, leveraging the EHR (configuration), data intake (screening methods), primary considerations for screening (literacy, accessibility, automation, real time data reflection), systematizing data collection (electronic reminders, clinical care guidelines, population health management tools, huddle sheets), screening frequency (using subset of questions, using length of visit).