January 2023
Welcome to the first edition of the Digital Digest. This newsletter has been designed specifically with nursing and ancillary clinical support teams in mind. Our goal is to keep you up to date on technologies and initiatives that can help you save time and be more efficient so you can spend your time on what matters most – caring for our patients. I look forward to sharing with you the latest technology-related news that directly impacts you!
As we advance into 2023, I want to remind you of the impact we all can have on our community’s health through promoting health equity. As the National Academy of Sciences reported in The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity, health inequities are defined as:
“Systematic differences in the opportunities that groups have to achieve optimal health, leading to unfair and avoidable differences in health outcomes,” disproportionately impacting people of color; the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community; people with disabilities; those with low income; and those living in rural areas.
As many of you may know, health inequities and SDOH are a focus for Houston Methodist and specifically, the Office of Culture and Engagement. Through the collaboration of multiple department and teams, I’m happy to say we will focus on expanding our technology tools to support these efforts throughout 2023!
As many of you may know, health inequities and SDOH are a focus for Houston Methodist and specifically, the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Through the collaboration of multiple department and teams, I’m happy to say we will focus on expanding our technology tools to support these efforts throughout 2023!
One of the most notable changes you will see initially is the addition of the SDOH Wheel in Epic, which you can read about below. SDOH adds more color to each patient’s story, beyond their current clinical record, to help you identify patients at risk for negative outcomes and connect them with needed services. This is currently available from the Epic Storyboard for ambulatory and will be available for inpatient areas by the end of January. This is a solid start in raising awareness of how these different SDOH domains can impact a patient’s overall health outcomes. Our next steps are to obtain more information on these domains from patients and then allocate the appropriate resources to connect them with resources based on their specific needs. Stay tuned for how this exciting work evolves and further demonstrates how we truly are Leading Medicine!
I hope you enjoy our first Digital Digest. I would love to hear your feedback. Please click the link above to let us know what you think, provide feedback and share ideas for future content or innovative ideas to advance patient care and clinical efficiency.
