GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Nov. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Velatura HIE Corporation (Velatura) today announced a new partnership with findhelp (formerly known as Aunt Bertha), the leading search and referral platform of social service organizations, to provide a safe, secure, and effective platform for participants to connect patients with social services. The newly formed partnership will enable Velatura’s HIE network to serve as a health data utility.
"Velatura wants to ensure our health care providers and communities have the tools they need to support social determinants of health (SDoH) initiatives in our service territories across the country,” said Angie Bass, Executive Vice President of Velatura. “The findhelp solution will allow our providers to have access to community resource information, enabling them to connect patients with community-based organizations that will provide critical social care services to those in need.”
Velatura’s health care providers will now have access to patient records with both clinical and social care information delivered either directly through an electronic health record (EHR) integration or via Velatura’s clinical portal. The platform’s robust geographic reporting and data sharing will allow providers and clinicians to better understand the demand for services and specific needs as well as measure the success of SDoH initiatives and their impact at a community-wide level.
“Findhelp’s SDoH platform was the clear partner to support our communities — aligned with an understanding that successful social care programs require an open and focused network, a platform that supports integrations and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and collaboration with multiple vendors to solve tough challenges, including closed loop referrals between different systems of record for community-based organizations,” said Bass. “Historically, there have been a number of challenges in accessing the data needed to accurately assess social programs and create social risk profiles. The partnership between findhelp and Velatura will allow for HIEs to seamlessly integrate social care, paving the way for an interoperable social care sector.”
Findhelp’s social care network connects verified social care providers with people seeking help. Findhelp has a national platform with over 552,700 program locations easily accessible to people in need in every ZIP code in America, enabling millions of people to access localized resources across the United States every year. The platform not only allows staff to easily search, connect and refer patients to social care programs, but also supports and empowers patients and community members to self-navigate through a public facing site.
“Supporting services like the findhelp tool help to reduce health inequities and disparities, and also lead to better health outcomes for patients,” said Bass. “Findhelp is a diligent partner that will support Velatura’s HIE network by supporting a network of community-based organizations via EHR integration and by running on Velatura’s platform – a comprehensive approach to establish trust with community partners with a long term and sustainable vision.”
Factors such as the conditions in which people live, learn, and play affect a wide variety of health risks and outcomes. As much as 80 percent of a person’s health is defined by social determinants of health. While thousands of nonprofits and social care providers are addressing these needs, navigating the system to get help is both difficult and time consuming.
“Findhelp began with a simple idea—that every person and family should be able to find help with dignity and ease,” said Erine Gray, findhelp’s Founder and CEO. “Now, with our partnership with Velatura, we are able to do just that for thousands of community members in the Midwest and other territories affiliated with Velatura. Findhelp provides HIE networks, health plans, hospital systems, and community-based organizations with the tools and insights they need to deliver the right services to the right places, enabling them to do more with less.”
To learn more about Velatura, please visit https://velatura.org/. For more information on findhelp’s social care network, please visit company.findhelp.com
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About Velatura
The Velatura HIE Corporation is a consolidation of health information exchanges, community-based organizations, and health information networks that have formally affiliated to achieve national economies of scale while simultaneously maintaining localized stakeholder alignment. It aims to serve as a health data utility and data exchange network for public and private health care stakeholders by providing meaningful services, transformations and advancements to achieve superior public health, interoperability and patient experience. For more information or to learn more about Velatura HIE Corporation or its parent company, Velatura Public Benefit Corporation, visit www.velatura.org
About Findhelp
Findhelp’s network connects people seeking help and verified social care providers that serve them. Thousands of nonprofits and social care providers serve their communities. But for most people, navigating the system to get help has been difficult, time consuming, and frustrating. Too many Americans are suffering, and they don’t need to. So at findhelp, we created a social care network that connects people and programs — making it easy for people to find social services in their communities, for nonprofits to coordinate their efforts, and for customers to integrate social care into the work they already do. Today, findhelp serves millions of users and is used by most major health plans, hospital systems, foundations, governments, and tens of thousands of community-based organizations (CBOs). To learn more about findhelp’s social care network, please visit: company.findhelp.com
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