Greenway Incorporating Health Equity Features into its EHR

Addressing health equity starts with meeting patients where they are. This means, for example, offering treatment and medication options that are suited to the patient’s current situation (socioeconomic status, transportation availability, location, etc.). The natural place to capture and display this type of information is in the Electronic Health Record (EHR). Greenway Health, a leading ambulatory EHR provider, has added new features to accommodate this non-medical information and make recommendations based on that data.

Dr. Michael Blackman, Chief Medical Officer at Greenway Health sat down with Healthcare IT Today to preview these new features, talk about health equity, and share other enhancements that have been made to their platform.

Factors influencing health equity

According to the WHO, health equity is achieved when everyone can attain their full potential for health and well-being. The WHO, identifies many factors that influence health and health equity including:

  • Socio-economic position
  • Education
  • Occupation
  • Income
  • Public health policies
  • Access to the health system
  • Personal behaviors
  • Culture

“Healthcare’s goal is to provide the best care for patients no matter their background, income or location,” stated Dr. Blackman. “We want to achieve the best outcomes possible. Yet traditionally only 20% of our health outcomes are determined by the care we receive. So, we need to look at everything that surrounds that.”

In other words, healthcare providers need to place more attention on the external factors that influence health, like the ones put forward by the WHO, and not just on the medical data that makes up only 20% of health.

EHRs have a role in addressing health equity

EHRs hold a lot of data. Most of that data is based on the patient encounters documented by clinicians. But as more attention is placed on a patient’s non-medical situation, EHRs need to expand to allow for the capture, tracking, and surfacing of this additional information.

Dr. Blackman firmly believes that EHRs have a role to play in health equity. He has been working with the Greenway team to add capabilities to capture and display this type of information to physicians at the point of care.

“As a physician, when I’m writing a prescription there is an implicit assumption that the patient is going to be able to fill it,” said Dr. Blackman. “Frankly that’s not always true.”

Greenway now displays prescription benefits so that physicians can have a discussion with their patients about the potential cost of their medication and make adjustments if needed. “It’s important that physicians initiate this conversation,” continued Dr. Blackman. “It is very unlikely that patients will ask questions about the medication that physicians have just prescribed.”

In addition to prescription benefits, Greenway’s EHR now has the capability of showing whether a patient lives in an area that lacks access to fresh food (aka a food desert) and make recommendations for local food assistance programs. Their EHR also makes appointment recommendations based on the patient’s access to transportation – it may suggest a telehealth appointment if the specialist is not easy for the patient to get to.

Other Greenway enhancements

Other improvements that Greenway has made to their EHR include:

  • A 21st Century Cures certified version
  • An updated and more streamlined user interface
  • Enhanced support for phones and tablets

Watch the interview with Dr. Blackman:

Learn more about Greenway at: https://www.greenwayhealth.com/

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About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is the co-founder of the #hcldr (healthcare leadership) tweetchat one of the most popular and active healthcare social media communities on Twitter. Colin speaks, tweets and blogs regularly about healthcare, technology, marketing and leadership. He is currently an independent marketing consultant working with leading healthIT companies. Colin is a member of #TheWalkingGallery. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

   

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