Thinking bigger on healthcare and social care collaboration

For all their fundamental similarities, the healthcare and social care industries boast many differences. From administrative process to care delivery to culture, a lot of work must be done to align these two worlds so they can create collaborative relationships.

But we believe that alignment is an essential part of a wellconnected implementation, especially in projects such as Cook County, Illinois, where we’re creating a first-of-its-kind community information exchange with partners 4Medica and the New Jersey Innovation Institute.

The system we’re building will record, categorize and systematize the social determinants of health for Chicago region community members, connecting healthcare and social care together in unprecedented ways.

The first step: serving thousands of homeless people who seek social or healthcare in the Chicago region every year

At its beating heart, this is an effort to leverage data to create better care for individuals and better system-level decision-making. That means it’s vitally important to create buy-in and trust among all users, including those from the different worlds of social care and healthcare. This is how we’ll move from creating data to using it effectively toward our ultimately goals.

That’s why wellconnected is building an implementation process that takes into account technology standards, incentive models and business cultures of our users. We’ll use this feedback to hone our technology stack in a way that applicable and intuitive for any community in the U.S.

This work has already begun in concert with Brian Handspicker, a national expert in interoperability standards, who is working with wellconnected to drive the conversation on consent models in Chicago.

‘allco’ is being recognized by many important social care stakeholders across the U.S., and we’re excited to announce that wellconnected CEO Duane Conners has been invited to participate in a panel conversation at HIMSS, a major healthcare conference in Las Vegas. The conversation is titled “Data Matters: Elevating Health and Community Information Exchange” and will take place at 10 a.m. on Thursday, March 6, at the HIMSS Data Quality Theater, Booth #1349. Please stop by and say hi!

Those interested in learning more can reach out to wellconnected CEO Duane Conners at duane@getwellconnected.co