Christopher Callahan, M.D., on integrating and building health system infrastructure for social needs.
Transcript:
Eskenazi Health has invested a lot in integrating social care with medical care, and in this manuscript we wanted to share the early lessons learned through that process, which is now three to five years old, depending on what we use for a start date.
We thought that other health systems, and particularly other safety net health systems, might benefit from some of the findings we had through this early work. We had based our plan for building the infrastructure largely off a National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine report that had recommended that health systems invest in this infrastructure, and one of the things that we wanted to point out is when we say substantial infrastructure, we mean costly at the same time, and that those costs are largely borne by the health system and by philanthropy. And we have had a great deal of success with local philanthropy here in Central Indiana to raise the funds needed to build this infrastructure, although I would say many parts of this infrastructure have roots in Eskenazi several decades long. The National Academies report let us put it in an organized framework and perhaps invest a little bit more in some of the components that they thought were most important.
