NYC Well being + Hospitals, the most important municipal healthcare system within the nation, says it’s making regular progress in screening sufferers for social wants and integrating instruments into its EHR to make that screening simpler for clinicians.
The well being system has built-in a device from a vendor referred to as findhelp into Epic to attach sufferers to group sources. The device features a social service referral platform and community of greater than 7,000 packages – together with meals help, transportation, and shelter – serving New York Metropolis that’s usually up to date to make sure accuracy.
NYC Well being + Hospitals’ social wants screening program screened greater than 250,000 major care sufferers for social wants in outpatient settings in 2023. Over one in 4 sufferers who had been screened final 12 months needed help with social wants. The brand new platform will assist well being system workers refer sufferers to group sources. Later this 12 months, NYC Well being + Hospitals, which has 11 hospitals and greater than 70 affected person care places throughout the town’s 5 boroughs, will develop its social wants screening to incorporate inpatient settings.
“As medical doctors, we all know that too typically our sufferers are scuffling with making ends meet, and that may be a significantly irritating barrier to getting or staying wholesome,” stated Nichola Davis, M.D., M.S., vice chairman and chief inhabitants well being officer at NYC Well being + Hospitals, in a press release. “This new referral platform and patient-facing web site for workers is a strong new device in our toolbox to assist our sufferers join with group providers and sources.”
Findhelp allows NYC Well being + Hospitals workers to generate automated useful resource suggestions after finishing the Social Determinants of Well being screening device in Epic. The suggestions are tailor-made to the place sufferers dwell and is then added to the paperwork that sufferers obtain after a health care provider’s go to. Employees can even use the findhelp platform to seek for community-based sources to deal with affected person wants and may share them with sufferers through textual content or electronic mail of their most well-liked language. They can even ship closed-loop referrals to pick community-based organizations to follow-up with sufferers and join them to care.
Sufferers may also entry findhelp by a brand new web site to search out native community-based organizations that provide social providers, resembling meals help, transportation, shelter, and ESL and job coaching packages. Sufferers can entry the location by Epic’s MyChart or instantly from the NYC Well being +. Hospitals homepage by clicking “Discover Sources in My Neighborhood.”
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