If you asked her in January, Ellie Zuehlke, director of Community Benefit and Engagement at Allina Health, would have said the health system would fully implement its virtual strategy, including digitizing its social determinants of health screening and referral, in about five years. She couldn’t have imagined that just a few months later the health system would have pivoted to digital in less than a week.
“In March, our world flipped upside down and we in Minnesota basically shut our clinic,” Zuehlke said to PatientEngagementHIT. “People joke about it but it’s really true. We implemented our five-year virtual strategy in five days.”….more
Thank you for sharing! I work as a Community Health Worker in Oregon and getting these screenings done has proved to be a challenge. We are now screening when setting up virtual visit software and then escalating screenings for everyone over the phone who has tested positive for Covid. It’s an adaption for sure, this need to be virtual may change healthcare forever.