Lessons Learned: Implementing and Expanding Social Need Screening Program in Health Centers

HITEQ Highlights Webinar

This HITEQ Highlights webinar presented promising practices and key considerations informed by health centers across the US who are successfully collecting, monitoring, and addressing social need data. 

Health centers are increasingly interested in implementing social need screening tools to identify ways to advance whole-person care and community-level health. However, implementing social needs screening tools requires a great deal of investment with regards to securing buy-in from leadership and staff, configuring the EHR, and developing processes and workflows for addressing positive screens. While addressing social needs in the context of healthcare is not new, systematically collecting, monitoring, and acting on data is an emerging space. With many health centers now trialing this implementation process, there are a number of promising practices that might be valuable to health centers considering this next step. This webinar offered key takeaways and examples to guide health centers through the implementation process, or help health centers with existing social needs screening programs to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement in their EHRs and workflows.