RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Developing Electronic Health Record (EHR) Strategies Related to Health Center Patients' Social Determinants of Health
JF The Journal of the American Board of Family
                Medicine
JO J Am Board Fam Med
FD American Board of Family Medicine
SP 428
OP 447
DO 10.3122/jabfm.2017.04.170046
VO 30
IS 4
A1 Rachel Gold
A1 Erika Cottrell
A1 Arwen Bunce
A1 Mary Middendorf
A1 Celine Hollombe
A1 Stuart Cowburn
A1 Peter Mahr
A1 Gerardo Melgar
YR 2017
UL http://www.jabfm.org/content/30/4/428.abstract
AB Background: “Social determinants of heath” (SDHs) are nonclinical factors that profoundly affect health. Helping community health centers (CHCs) document patients' SDH data in electronic health records (EHRs) could yield substantial health benefits, but little has been reported about CHCs' development of EHR-based tools for SDH data collection and presentation.Methods: We worked with 27 diverse CHC stakeholders to develop strategies for optimizing SDH data collection and presentation in their EHR, and approaches for integrating SDH data collection and the use of those data (eg, through referrals to community resources) into CHC workflows.Results: We iteratively developed a set of EHR-based SDH data collection, summary, and referral tools for CHCs. We describe considerations that arose while developing the tools and present some preliminary lessons learned.Conclusion: Standardizing SDH data collection and presentation in EHRs could lead to improved patient and population health outcomes in CHCs and other care settings. We know of no previous reports of processes used to develop similar tools. This article provides an example of 1 such process. Lessons from our process may be useful to health care organizations interested in using EHRs to collect and act on SDH data. Research is needed to empirically test the generalizability of these lessons.