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While the HITECH Act of 2009 spurred widespread EHR adoption across healthcare organizations, national health information exchange (HIE) investments have largely left out community-based referral organizations, limiting social determinants of health (SDOH) data interoperability.
SDOH data exchange is key for improving population health, with factors such as housing, food and nutrition, transportation, and education accounting for up to 50 percent of county-level variation in health outcomes.
When healthcare providers and social services exchange SDOH data, they can coordinate care that addresses both the clinical and social needs of patients.
CRISP Shared Services (CSS), a nonprofit providing health IT services to HIEs across six states, recently appointed Marc Rabner, MD, MPH, as CMO to help advance SDOH data interoperability efforts.
Rabner, a practicing pediatrician at Children’s National Medical Center, served as a clinical advisor to CSS for the past four years, helping drive cross-agency projects for SDOH interoperability.
“I’ve always been interested in how systems impact patients and their health outcomes,” Rabner told EHRIntelligence in an interview. “I got into pediatrics because I thought if I could intervene early in a patient’s life, I could have a big impact on their life course.”
However, soon after he began his career, Rabner recognized that the current healthcare delivery system is not ideal for improving patient outcomes.