{"id":14950,"date":"2021-11-03T11:02:54","date_gmt":"2021-11-03T11:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interhospi.com\/?p=14950"},"modified":"2021-11-03T11:02:54","modified_gmt":"2021-11-03T11:02:54","slug":"cerner-integrates-social-determinants-of-health-into-ehr-to-advance-health-equity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interhospi.com\/cerner-integrates-social-determinants-of-health-into-ehr-to-advance-health-equity\/","title":{"rendered":"Cerner integrates social determinants of health into EHR to advance health equity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cerner integrates social determinants of health into EHR to advance health equity<\/h1>\/ in Featured Articles<\/a> <\/span><\/span><\/header>\n<\/div><\/section>
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In a laudable initiative to advance health equity, Cerner Corporation, working at the intersection of healthcare and information technology, has recently launched a new solution called Cerner Determinants of Health.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The solution, which is designed to help healthcare providers address inequities in healthcare, is a dashboard and supporting set of tools, integrated into the Cerner electronic health record, to help clinicians determine social risk factors for patients and provide a more holistic patient care plan that can help identify potential targets for social intervention opportunities.<\/p>\n

A key aspect of Cerner Determinants of Health is its ability to identify community-level vulnerabilities and a patient\u2019s social needs. The dashboard within the technology uses combined geospatial, public data and patient-clinician insights to provide a view of the conditions in which people live.<\/p>\n

Social risk factors for health include non-clinical influences such as housing instability, transportation barriers and employment which have a profound bearing on a person\u2019s overall health. There are several studies that highlight this. The American Action Forum (AAF) notes [1] that while 95 percent of U.S. health expenditures go toward medical care, most experts have long-agreed that medical services have a limited impact on health and well-being. What determines someone\u2019s health is a combination of genetic predisposition, behaviours, the medical services received, and the social and physical environment. The AAF points out that recent estimates attribute 10 to 20 percent of health outcomes to medical care, 30 percent to genetics, 40 to 50 percent to behaviour, and 20 percent to the social and physical environment. Individual behaviour and the environment are often studied together as the non-medical determinants of health. In studies that only consider modifiable determinants and ignore genetics, the non-medical factors account for 80 to 90 percent of a person\u2019s health, and the contribution of medical care remains 10 to 20 percent.<\/p>\n

Dr. April Giard, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Northern Light Health in Brewer, Maine, which has recently implemented the solution, said: \u201cAddressing health equity and access to care issues is a critical need for us. We can\u2019t truly provide patient-centred, comprehensive care without understanding social risk factors our patients are experiencing. Through use of screening tools and the determinants of health dashboard, care managers are able to engage and build a trusting relationship with patients to identify and intervene on their social needs. Furthermore, we plan on leveraging the dashboard to pinpoint and prioritize areas of vulnerability and create plans to address social barriers for better health across our service lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jvion\u2019s AI solution<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cerner Determinants of Health was developed with the integration of a solution developed by Jvion, a Suwanee, Georgia, U.S.-based company with a focus on providing prescriptive intelligence using clinical artificial intelligence. As the company puts it, they aim to \u201caddress whole patient health by surfacing the clinical and social determinants of health barriers influencing poor clinical outcomes and patient engagement. These modifiable risk factors are then mapped to evidence-based clinical guidance to enable decisionmaking within clinical and operational workflows\u201d.<\/p>\n

Lizzy Feliciano, Jvion\u2019s Chief Marketing Officer, noted that they are \u201cseeing incredible momentum in terms of both need and adoption of our prescriptive intelligence. These partnerships represent a vote of confidence from some of the biggest names in healthcare that our use of clinical AI to understand the modifiable aspects of a person\u2019s healthcare journey can enable better care delivery and outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Feliciano added: \u201cClinicians and case management teams are overwhelmed and overburdened by the sheer volume of data they are expected to sift through to inform care decisions. We solve that by connecting risk to action via evidence-based guidance and helping our customer operationalize those insights across their enterprise. We\u2019ve had a number of studies published this year highlighting the accuracy of our models and their ability to drive down the cost of care in areas like oncology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spotlight on health inequity<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Covid-19 pandemic has cast a spotlight on the devasting impact of health inequity across the U.S. As Rebecca Winokur, MD, MPH, pointed out in a recent perspective article for Cerner [2]: \u201c We\u2019re not only seeing stark differences in health outcomes during the Covid-19 pandemic, but we continue to see the devastating effects of historic and ongoing disparities in health outcomes across all specialties and venues of care.\u201d<\/p>\n

She noted the following examples in the U.S.:<\/p>\n