Implementing a Social Determinants Screening and Referral Infrastructure During Routine Emergency Department Visits, Utah, 2017–2018
IMPLEMENTATION EVALUATION — Volume 17 — June 18, 2020
PEER REVIEWED
Starting with triage, the emergency department care management begins with rooming and registration by registrars, then proceeds to treatment, discharge planning and education by nurses, and financial counseling by financial counselors. In the emergency department, information from the social needs screening tool is put into the REDCap database. From the database, referral is made to the 2-1-1 information specialist via secure REDCap messaging. 2-1-1 makes contact within 48 hours after the discharge details have been entered into ServicePoint. Data are then extracted from ServicePoint and matched by unique patient identifier to the REDCap database and to screening and referral information reported back to UHealth Care Management. Data are also extracted from Epic and match by unique patient identifier to the REDCap database.
Figure 1.
Emergency department screening and referral workflow for patients with social needs, Utah, 2017–2018. Abbreviation: REDCap, Research Electronic Data Capture database (28); UHealth, University of Utah Health.
A total of 210 patients were screened, and there were complete data for 162 of them. Of those screened, 129 patients had needs (107 with complete data). There were 81 patients without needs (55 with complete data). Of the 129 patients with needs, 62 did not wish to be contacted (47 with complete data) and 67 who wished to be contacted (60 with complete data). Of the 81 patients without needs, 6 wished to be contacted (5 with complete data) and 75 who did not wish to be contacted (50 with complete data). The 2 groups that wished to be contacted totaled 73 (65 with complete data). Of those, 32 were reached by 2-1-1 (all with complete data) and 41 were not reached by 2-1-1 (33 with complete data).
Figure 2.
Emergency department screening and referral workflow for patients with social needs, Utah, 2017–2018.
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