EHR Association

enhanced communication mechanisms must be built to connect all stakeholders on the patient’s care team, both inside and outside the traditional healthcare environment. Health IT using networks and API-based technologies can connect healthcare providers, patients and community/social service groups, creating the infrastructure necessary to act for the good of the patient in resolving the challenges they are facing. Finally, interoperability and vocabulary standards play clear roles in enabling scalable solutions to share SDOH. Standards and guidance are becoming available but need to be accelerated given the importance of the effort. The ability for all members of a patient’s extended care team – clinical providers and those in the community – to bidirectionally and securely exchange accurate, complete, and standardized data is critical to identifying and closing care and quality gaps and enabling individuals to improve their health. Transforming the System Healthcare is undergoing a radical and necessary transformation to close care gaps, improve quality and enable a truly effective public health response to future crises. Health information and technology are critical to ensuring that this evolution achieves the desired outcomes for individual and population health. The EHRA is committed to working with other health IT developers, regulatory agencies, healthcare providers and payers and taking a collaborative approach to resolving these challenges. Doing so will create a stronger and more effective healthcare system for us all. collected, maintained, shared and utilized while ensuring the highest level of confidence around security, privacy and consent. Health IT also can also be leveraged to bridge the information gap between the groups that can act on critical social determinants of health (SDOH) – the non-clinical factors linked to more than 80% of an individual’s overall health status that impact more than half of all health expenditures. Social service agencies and other community-based organizations, such as those providing support related to food, housing and transportation, can have a measurable impact on a patient’s health outcomes. But