UPHCS Assistant Director Katrina Keough gives a presentation about servicing the gaps between nonprofit services and community needs. (Journal photo by Abby LaForest)

MARQUETTE — Service organizations from around Marquette County gathered on Thursday afternoon to network and learn about efforts to address the gaps between services and community member access.

The Marquette County Community Resource Forum, led by Upper Peninsula Health Care Solutions and the Upper Peninsula Health Plan, allowed organizations to learn about UPHCS’s efforts to establish a Community Information Exchange program following the framework of the State of Michigan’s CIE Task Force, which is a network of stakeholders, healthcare providers, and nonprofits (among others) that enables information to be shared among many different organizations. CIE is community-governed and uses different technologies for a holistic coordination of a patient’s care between organizations, which will enhance organizations’ understandings of the needs of their clientele and improve service accessibility and outcomes. UPHCS Assistant Director Katrina Keough explained that part of that collaborative work includes bridging communication gaps regarding medical data between different organizations. Keough said that if they can do that with physiological data, it would be in the best interest of their clients for the network to use social determinants of health to help them too.

“So if we’re translating medical data, we’re translating labs, we’re sending labs to different organizations or different industries or different hospitals, why can’t we send social lingo? Why can’t I say ‘John Smith has a housing insecurity issue because he’s screened positive?’ Why can’t I send that to a CDR? It just doesn’t exist right now. You would think in this day and age, it exists, but it doesn’t,” began Keough. “So what our organization has been doing is working with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to take this infrastructure where we are taking medical records and sending it to other ancillary hospitals, clinics, long-term care, other (outside of the state even) entities and exchanging that information, specialties, what have you, using that model and seeing if we can then translate social care to be able to share that information using that same infrastructure, whether it’s policy, whether it’s governance of that information or whether it’s that technical infrastructure. So our organization is really focused on that technical infrastructure and then working with our partners like UPCAP…to see how we might actually operationalize and transfer that information.”

Keough also took some time to explain what Michigan Social Determinants of Health are – factors such as housing, childcare, and transportation – that may influence whether or not a client or patient is able to fully meet their own healthcare needs.

“For the Michigan Social Determinants of Health Strategy, which started before 2022, or really starting between 2022 and 2024, was the operationalization of the program and the public communities really better understanding what social determinants of health were (and) helping advocate for that,” Keough explained. “Then, looking at the governance of how we respond to that system and how we look at that through an equitable lens, not just the quality, but through the equity lines of how we respond and how do we not just look at it from a healthcare organization or industry perspective. How do we marry or bridge some of that social media-based organization here and what are the implications for that?”

She mentioned that what UPHCS is trying to do is build the bridge between services, organizations and clients that might exist using these pieces of social data, so a collaborative effort can be made to ensure that a patient or client is having all of their needs met, rather than just their physiological ones.

“So what that looked like was building this model (that says) we need to build this bridge. This bridge does what exists between our health data and social data and the rest of our community-based organizations. So our community-based organizations, you might have some sort of electronic way that you’re capturing who your consumers are, who your clients are, or you might not. Right now, the bridge that we have built is between the health information exchange and the clinics. What we don’t have is the bridge between you all as community-based organizations and some sort of mechanism where you’re tracking your consumers,” said Keough. “So there’s that gap between this entity where we’re translating this data electronically and getting it to you all. What we want to learn today is, is that valuable to you to receive referrals electronically? Is it valuable to you to have a dashboard where you know what is going on with the clients in your area? Is it valuable to know whether another organization that’s working in, say, senior living or senior care, to know if they have openings or resources that are available that maybe this week you don’t have available? That’s what we’re trying to learn and what gaps exist, because as our organization is building this information and exchange of electronic referrals and sharing of social determinants of health screens, it will probably cause an influx of referrals to your organizations. What our organization is trying to do, what (we’re screaming) from the rooftops is, ‘You cannot be these community-based organizations out of this conversation.”

After discussing a pilot for UPHCS’s Community Information Exchange program that was funded via grant monies, Missy Kositzky from the Upper Peninsula Commission for Area Progress, an organization that focuses on providing resources and aid to aging and older adults, provided a testimony on how part of this program has helped their organization better meet the needs of community members, specifically under the Upper Peninsula 2-1-1 independent call centers. Representatives attending the event also had a chance to work on collaborative brainstorming activities where this type of structure could be effective within their own organizations.

More information about UPHCS can be found on their website at uphcs.org. If you are interested in UPCAP’s services, their website can be reached at upcap.org.

More information about the State of Michigan’s CIE Strategy can be found online at michigan.gov/mdhhs/inside-mdhhs/legislationpolicy/2022-2024-social-determinants-of-health-strategy/community-information-exchange-task-force.

Abby LaForest can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 548. Her email address is alaforest@miningjournal.net.