Lessons Learned: Implementing and Expanding Social Needs Screening Programs in Health Centers - Session 5: Learning Lab

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 will explore the levels of maturity in the social needs screening implementation process.

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

Participants will gain 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 has partnered with the Louisiana Primary Care Association to design this series. Louisiana-based health centers will be showcased throughout the series to share their experiences with social needs screening, including successes, challenges, and lessons learned.

Session 5: Learning Lab: Health Center Sharing on Action and Progress in Implementing and Advancing Their Social Needs Screening Program
During this session, participants will share their takeaways from the learning collaborative, and plans and action steps to advance their social needs screening program.

Topics: Communicating with patients about social needs (increasing comfort with asking Sensitive Questions, increasing comfort with implementing a new process where you may start by collecting data that you aren't able to immediately address), Closing the loop on internal and external referrals, Integrating follow-up into the EHR.