1. High Tech Solutions for a Low Tech Population – Healthcare IT According to the Kaiser Family Foundation a person’s risk of premature death is 40% related to individual behavior, 30% genetics, 20% environment, and just 10% due to access to healthcare.((Artiga, Samantha, and Elizabeth Hinton. “Beyond Health Care: The Role of Social Determinants in Promoting Health and Health Equity.” The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 9 July 2019)) Many integrated healthcare organizations are shifting focus to actively address the social determinants of health found in their client population. Organizations who serve under-insured, un-insured, or state-insured clients regularly say, “they don’t have access to cell-phones/computers/internet, so we don’t/can’t use value based care technology to reach them.” At blueEHR we disagree. One of our clients is a free clinic based in a suburban-rural county outside of a major metropolitan area. According to a recent study the health disparities in this county are huge. People living in neighborhoods off of the major highways are expected to die 10-15 years earlier than people living in the ‘mid-county’ area.((“Getting Ahead: The Uneven Opportunity Landscape in Northern Virginia.” Northern Virginia Health Foundation, 1 Mar. 2018)) The major barriers to healthcare in this county are transportation, money, education/language, and childcare. These roadblocks to healthcare were felt by the approximately 50,000 uninsured members of the county, before medicaid expansion.

2. From the public data that our client has shared with us of their approximately 2,000 customers 65% of them do not speak English as a first language. The average literacy level is that of a seventh grader. Approximately 50% of their clients do not have their own transportation, and rely on friends, family, the bus system, or walking((We learned that one of their clients walks five miles, one way, crossing two major highways with no dedicated pedestrian footpaths, once a month to attend a one-hour diabetic education class & receive free diabetic test strips so they don’t have to pay over $20 a month for strips out of their pocket.)). The majority of clients do have cell-phones, but...Read more Originally published at https://bluebrix.health/blogs/high-tech-solutions-low-tech- population-healthcare-it/ 23 September 2019