- accountability,
- benchmarking of activities,
- supportive decision-making,
- continuous information-gathering across organizational functions,
- maintenance of communication pathways,
- messaging of safeguards,
- organizational collaboration to improve departmental cohesiveness,
- security and risk mitigation activities, and
- operational monitoring for risks or breaches to facilitate anticipatory changes.
Provider organizations must develop insightful care innovations to assist communities that experience high stressors due to certain social determinants. For example, while social distancing has demonstrated its effectiveness in lowering infection rates, certain ethnic communities in certain locales have a higher infection and mortality risk. Initial studies and calls for review of this epidemiological phenomena point to social determinants that exist for ethnic communities, particularly African American and Latinx communities.
To unpack these critical population health variables, leaders in innovation may look to their internal data system to aggregate for risk indicators, such as comorbidity, that are connected to certain social determinants for these community members. Providers may require new data reports from their information technology (IT) department or data vendor. These can be developed with on-demand report features to facilitate more intensive care coordination and integrated care follow-ups. Providers may also turn to their IT staff to 1) develop coding logic for monitoring post-release COVID-19 patients and 2) develop clinical indicators to include self-reports of symptom resurgence.
The time is now for leadership to step up and welcome change.