The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Human Services has signed a contract with the members of Pennsylvania’s Consortium of Health Information Exchanges and Findhelp, a closed referral platform provider, to build a statewide online social care resource, called PA Navigate.
WHY IT MATTERS
Pennsylvanians will be able to use the platform to find help for themselves and their families, alongside social service providers, community organizations, government agencies and healthcare providers to help create and track service referrals for patients’ SDOH needs, according to the company’s announcement week.
Findhelp will collaborate with Central PA Connect, Clinical Connect HIE, HealthShare Exchange and Keystone Health Information Exchange to build the PA Navigate, with the goal of making it easy to assess patients’ SDOH needs with privacy, convenience and dignity at the point of concern.
Healthcare providers will have access to the most complete picture of an individual’s social care history and current status, the company said.
“We have built a strong, trusting relationship with Pennsylvanians and are excited to work with our new partners to help more residents in need,” Findhelp founder and CEO Erine Gray said in a statement.
More than 750,000 people in the state have used the platform over the past five years, the company said, adding that it is the nation’s largest network of free and low-cost programs that connect people to housing, education and food resources.
Findhelp (formerly Aunt Bertha), which was rated #1 for SDOH networks by KLAS last year, has worked with more than 600 of America’s largest healthcare organizations, hospital systems, government municipalities, educational institutions and charities and existing customers in Pennsylvania, including Penn Medicine, Geisinger, Lehigh Valley Health Network, AmeriHealth Caritas, PA Health and Wellness and Highmark Health.
THE BIG TREND
Creating a national health data enterprise architecture that includes clinical, public health and social determinants is a critical need for public health management and pandemic preparedness, according to The Ellison Institute.
Gabriel Seidman, the institute’s policy director, said in March that federal data initiatives need public and private partnerships to lead innovation in data sharing.
“I keep coming back to social determinants data,” he told HIMSSTV in a discussion about the institute’s recommendations to the federal government.
ON THE RECORD
“We selected Findhelp as our technology partner for PA Navigate because they have the best integration capabilities in this space and are the technology that many healthcare organizations in our state have chosen to work with,” said Bill Marella, vice president of value-based care and data analysis from HealthShare Exchange, in a statement.
Andrea Fox is editor-in-chief of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.