Data Storyteller

With nearly 100% of community health centers utilizing electronic health records (EHR) to care for patients, focus has pivoted from implementation and new workflow development to enhancement in order to drive value and reflect patient needs and population trends. EHR technology presents potential opportunities and significant constraints. Providers frequently document and share potentially sensitive information in the EHR, such as risk for intimate partner violence (IPV), consistent offers of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), or patient sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). Capturing such information can be immensely helpful in providing care tailored to individuals’ needs, but additionally challenges teams to develop workflows that keep the data private rather than risk harm to patients through improper or unintended disclosure.

In recent years, health centers have become increasingly interested in and charged with not only addressing the health concerns of their patients, but centering and responding to patient’s social needs. According to Healthy People 2030, social needs, also known as the social determinants of health, are the conditions in the environments where people live, learn, work, and play that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks. Social needs encompass the quality of and access to resources such as housing, transportation, safety, employment, food, and more. Identifying and addressing unmet social needs as part of the clinical encounter provides the opportunity to deliver higher-quality, whole-person care, advance population health, and reduce healthcare costs.

In this video, viewers will learn how People, Process and Technology should factor into a health center's social needs screening workflow

The Social Determinants of Health Data Dashboards training is a four-module series. Modules range from about 8 minutes to 12 minutes in length. Module four provides advanced-level information on using social determinants of health data and dashboards for facilitating and tracking social needs referrals, conducting predictive analysis with social determinants of health and health outcomes data, and using social determinants of health data to improve reimbursement for addressing social needs.

The Social Determinants of Health Data Dashboards training is a four module series. Modules range from about 8 minutes to 12 minutes in length. Module three provides intermediate level information on collecting social determinants of health data and using data visualization for effective dashboards with stratification of data.