What You Should Know:
– Unite Us, the tech company building coordinated care
networks nationwide announced a significant expansion to its partnership with
Nebraska Health Information Initiative (NEHII), a health information exchange,
to six additional states.
– This growing partnership aims to break down existing obstacles between
clinical and social service providers to allow for improved SDoH workflows, comprehensive,
whole-person care with trackable outcomes and data, and the creation of
sustainable long-term models for care.
Unite Us, the technology
company building coordinated care networks nationwide, announced today that it
is expanding its partnership with Nebraska Health
Information Initiative (NEHII), a Health Information Exchange (HIE), to six
additional states including Iowa, Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota, Kansas,
and Minnesota. This growing partnership aims to break down existing obstacles
between clinical and social service providers to allow for comprehensive,
whole-person care with trackable outcomes and data.
This expansion between Unite Us and NEHII comes on the heels
of Unite Nebraska, the pair’s first joint statewide network that was announced
in June 2020 and launched last month, and will allow more people in need across
the country to get the services they need. Unite Us and NEHII have begun
rolling out the partnership into the additional states, and all networks will
be live by August 2022.
Why It Matters
Beyond the clinical care a person receives, 80% of an
individual’s health and quality of life is affected by their social
determinants of health (SDoH), conditions in the environment where people
are born, live, work, play, and worship.* It is critical that health care
providers have access to this full picture of their patients’ lives beyond the
clinic and hospital walls, in order to identify and help eliminate potential
barriers to their health and well-being.
NEHII is committed to helping organizations addressing SDoH
improve their workflows, track results and metrics, avoid wasteful and repeated
care, and create sustainable long-term models for care. NEHII will utilize
Unite Us’ person-centric platform to provide transparency, accountability, and
outcomes data to providers, and to incorporate community-based social care into
state ecosystems, particularly in rural areas with geographic variations in
access to critical services. This expansion and continued partnership paves the
way for additional collaborations with other HIEs, multiple health systems and
state Medicaid departments as they collectively move towards systems change.
“NEHII is thrilled to be expanding our partnership with Unite Us into six new states, to enable better support and health outcomes for all Americans,” says Jaime Bland, President and CEO of NEHII. “We know patients don’t seek care in a single institution, let alone a single state, especially along our borders. Statewide infrastructures for health and social care are more crucial than ever as COVID-19 continues to devastate the nation. We’re eager to help additional states combine their clinical and social care data in one secure location to provide patients and providers a more comprehensive view of their longitudinal health record.”
