Lansing, Michigan, Nov. 16, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Building off the momentum created by the Michigan Health Information Network’s (MiHIN’s) Interoperable Referrals Pledge, eight of the nation’s leading social care platform vendors, Care Advisors, CareConvene, Findhelp, Holon, PCE Systems, Riverstar, Unite Us and WellSky, have formed a Community of Practice (CoP) hosted by MiHIN. Collaboratively governed and facilitated, the CoP is dedicated to the statewide sharing of data that documents social need identification, referrals, interventions, and outcomes amongst care teams that span health and social care.
The organizations collectively created a charter and define their CoP as:
A group of people who share a common concern, a set of problems, or an interest in a topic and who come together to fulfill both individual and group goals through the sharing of best practices and creating new knowledge to advance a domain of professional practice.
The concern they share is that coordination of care is extremely challenging when data and contextual information is not easily accessible to the people who need to make real time decisions to provide care. The CoP’s initial focus is on creating a path for referral data to flow interoperably between platforms. To tackle the set of problems, their collective discovery process includes a technical and standards analysis that acknowledges that not all community-based organizations will have access to technically sophisticated systems. While a shared vision for data flow is emerging, the collaborators are laboring towards a shared perspective of privacy and governance for social care data.
“The Community of Practice shares a singular focus and shared mission of improving people’s lives by supporting community-lead systems of care,” said Lisa Nicolaou, MiHIN’s Cross Sector Data Program Director “Each respective organization is committing considerable time, energy and human capacity for public benefit. In the same way that trust must be facilitated between patient and provider to adequately and accurately capture the whole picture of a person’s health, so is the CoP working to foster trust between health and social care provider organizations, and between themselves as businesses in a competitive and currently unregulated space.”
Partnerships like the newly formed CoP work to create the trust and appropriate guardrails needed to pilot exchanges, which can provide the groundwork needed for strategic data governance at a community, state or national level.
“Advancing the use and interoperability of social care data is foundational to improving the health and well-being of all individuals and communities,” said Dr. Tim Pletcher, DHA, MiHIN Executive Director. “MiHIN is so proud to be convening a group of social care leaders who not only recognize the gap between services needed and services provided but are dedicated to closing the loop and sharing meaningful data freely.”
To learn more about our newly established CoP or to get involved, email Lisa Nicolaou, MSNI, MIHIN’s Cross Sector Data Sharing Program Director at lisa.nicolaou@mihin.org or visit our website.
###
About Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services
The Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) is Michigan’s state-designated entity for the technical, legal, secure, and private exchange of health information. Breaking down disparate and siloed data systems, the digital network is dedicated to transforming the healthcare experience, improving quality, decreasing cost and solving for health. MIHIN is a 501C3 non-profit, socio-technical collaboration that includes the State of Michigan, Health Information Exchanges, health systems, hospitals, care providers, behavioral health clinics, FQHC’s, PIHPs, health plans/payers, pharmacies, post-acute care, hospices, and the Governor’s Health Information Technology Commission. For more information, visit https://mihin.org
About CareAdvisors
CareAdvisors is a social care management company that addresses health disparities by developing a complete ecosystem for social care management. Our platform supports interoperability among clinical and human services data, value-based payment models, and comprehensive automation of manual, labor intensive workflows for social care management. For more information, visit https://care-advisors.com/
About CareConvene
CareConvene believes healthcare should be about achieving one’s full potential as an informed and empowered individual. Everyone should have the basics – health literacy, easy access to care, and tools that provide health recommendations. As a result, digital health interactions will become personal with a shared understanding of the patient’s goals. The CareConvene digital platform offers fully vertical solutions to help consumers and clinical teams build strong collaborative partnerships by balancing accessibility, convenience, optionality, and affordability.
About findhelp
Findhelp is the nation’s leading social care network, making it easy for customers in a wide range of industries to integrate social care into the work they already do—from education and government to housing, healthcare, and more. Through customer platforms and our public site, findhelp.org, the findhelp network reaches more than 13 million users across the country, making it easy to connect people seeking help and the verified social care providers that serve them, with dignity and ease. https://company.findhelp.com/
About Holo
Holon’s patented sensory technology curates multi-source patient and member information and automatically presents it directly within clinical workflows, saving healthcare teams time and relieving the everyday distractions and barriers to delivering high quality care. Holon leads with innovation to create tools and services that deliver operational relief to care teams who serve us all, producing both a business and human return on investment proving the value of business and human ROI.
About PCE Systems
PCE Systems is an information technology and services company based in Farmington Hills, MI specializing in custom, hosted solutions that go beyond the capabilities of typical "off-the-shelf" software. PCE provides comprehensive, integrated information systems for a variety of community-based behavioral health and social service organizations. PCE seeks to break the mold of typical software vendors by providing innovative solutions and unparalleled support services under a model that engenders trust and collaboration among PCE and its clients, with the ultimate goal of helping its clients provide the best and most efficient care and services to the individuals they serve.
About RiverStar
RiverStar partners with service organizations, health care providers, funders, and payers to deliver solutions for community-based whole person population health care to address social determinant and behavioral health needs. This collaborative approach leverages and integrates with existing community pathways, including health practice record systems, to facilitate care coordination among providers while empowering individuals to actively participate in their own care. By integrating social determinant care with behavioral health services, RiverStar’s Whole Person Care platform also offers new revenue opportunities to foster sustainability.
About Unite Us
Unite Us is the leading technology company that builds coordinated care networks of health and social service providers. Unite Us’ end-to-end solution establishes a new standard of care that identifies and predicts social care needs in communities, helps enroll people in services, and leverages meaningful outcomes data to further drive community investment. This HITRUST-certified social care infrastructure helps communities address social determinants of health and advance health equity. Follow Unite Us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
About WellSky®
WellSky® is a technology company leading the movement for intelligent, coordinated care worldwide. Our next-level software, analytics, and services power better outcomes and lower costs for stakeholders across the health and community care continuum. In today’s value-based care environment, WellSky helps providers, payers, health systems, and community organizations solve tough challenges, improve collaboration for growth, harness the power of data analytics, and achieve better outcomes by further connecting clinical and social care.
Attachment
