Guest Post from Dan Kazzaz, CEO, Secure Exchange Solutions
Real-Time Alerting to Help Manage Social Determinants of Health by Connecting High-Risk Members to Medicaid Care Teams
The role that Medicaid performs within the community is incredibly important, from hospitals, to behavioral health clinics, to long term care facilities and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs). These organizations often serve members who may suffer from chronic illnesses and complex care issues, necessitating multiple hospitalizations. The need to improve care transitions often requires understanding the members’ social, economic, and environmental factors, but many of these social determinants of health (SDoH) largely fall outside of the Medicaid Care Team’s reach. Direct Secure Messaging can provide a means to collaborate across the care continuum to better address the needs of patients and manage SDoH.
Effectively addressing SDoH factors requires enabling a communication infrastructure that includes a broad set of individuals across the continuum, who may or may not be physicians with access to EHRs and/or may not be connected to HIEs, other healthcare platforms, etc. The DirectTrust network allows for automated notifications (enabled by a fully secure, ONC certified, HIPAA-compliant communication system based on the Direct Standard™), which support the providers’ ability to care for their patients, and has been proven to improve patient care coordination, mitigate risk, and reduce healthcare costs.