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

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? This learning collaborative taught participants 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 have helped 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 2: Level 2: Implementing a Social Needs Screening Tool
During this session, participants uncovered ways to evaluate and refined their EHRs and workflows to establish a solid foundation to support consistent and standardized social needs data collection.

Topics: Interactive development process - starting with a small pilot, Configuring the EHR, Benefits of capturing in the EHR, Screening methods, Primary considerations for screening, Systematizing data collection, Screening frequency.