With so many health systems expanding their diversity, equity and inclusion posture, it will be increasingly important for CIOs and chief data officers to focus on the need for digital skills and health literacy in patient communities. Lack of digital skills and health literacy can have a profound influence on patients' overall well-being, and at some point, digital health literacy may be viewed as a social determinant of health, similar to basic resources like safe housing, food and education.
According to the World Health Organization, digital health literacy is "the ability to seek, find, understand, and appraise health information from electronic sources and apply the knowledge gained to addressing or solving a health problem." Because of the coronavirus pandemic, digital initiatives such as telemedicine have picked up steam as part of health systems' overall digital strategies.
As digital medicine continues to mature, leaders need to consider the implications of how these digital health strategies will service diverse populations and communities equitably. The more that organizations understand the impact of the digital skills and health literacy on their patient populations, the better prepared they will be to understand patients, ask the right questions and effectively educate their patients about their health.
The CIO and Chief Data Officer: Integrating New Tools
For hospitals and health systems to advance consumer-driven patient care, the work of the chief information officer (CIO) and chief data officer (CDO) are critical. These leaders must work together as a team to understand the value of mining data to create meaningful information that is useful to drive strategies to advance digital literacy within their patient communities.
CIOs and CDOs also must consider their unique patient populations’ needs when it comes to accessing digital health tools like cell phones, wearable devices and social media. The integration of digital health tools and big data has greatly harnessed opportunities for health systems to make decisions that have led to better outcomes for their patients. These tools provide access to a wealth of not only patient data, but also patient educational opportunities that have greatly moved the needle when it comes to patient-centric care. The problem, however, is not everyone benefits.
In a recent conversation with Kisha Hortman Hawthorne, PhD, Senior Vice President and CIO of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), she shared some key actions her organization has taken to help bridge the digital divide among vulnerable populations. “CHOP is taking many initiatives to bridge the large digital gap among people of color and those with low socioeconomic status,” Hawthorne said. “Our Homeless Health Initiative (HHI) is a multi-faceted community health outreach program that partners with women and children shelters to improve health access and quality,” she explained. “Our department was able to raise over $10,000 for this program and was able to convert HHI patients from a paper and pen process to devices and an electronic health record (EHR) workflow.”
The CHOP Information Services (IS) department volunteered to work on the EHR build, hardware configuration, deployment, testing and go-live of the program. According to Hawthorne, “direct registration in the EHR gives children and families the same benefits that our other patient populations are provided.”
Additionally, CHOP donated 60 Chromebooks to local students for digital learning purposes since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We want to ensure these generations are given the opportunity to catch up, so it doesn’t impact their future,” Hawthorne stated.
Forging External and Internal Partnerships
Health system leaders must be creative if they want to improve the digital health divide in their patient populations. Oftentimes, patient care must be tailored to an individual's need, both medically and socially. While some organizations have hired Chief Diversity Officers who are primarily focused on recruiting and retaining a workforce that reflects the organization's patient population, they also have to be conscious of providing fair and equitable services for the healthcare needs of the patients in their communities. Some patients may not have internet in their homes, so CIOs and CDOs must work in concert with the Chief Diversity Officer as well as providers, care coordinators and home health leadership on equitable strategies, particularly when it comes to staying connected to high-risk patients.
While risk scores and appropriate care plans are typically developed for high-risk patients, it will be increasingly important to continuously evaluate that the technical infrastructure is in place to ensure that these patients don’t slip through the cracks. Many organizations are seeing this function as a strategic partnership across the enterprise with technology leaders working collaboratively with business and clinical operations teams to enable digital health tools.
Both Hawthorne and Shakeeb Akhter, vice president of data & analytics at CHOP, emphasized the partnerships throughout their enterprise to continually support COVID-19 best practices and improve the patient experience. Some of examples of this include the ongoing telehealth program, virus updates and critical visitor information on the MyCHOP portal, employee and patient/family chatbots with COVID-19 content, an employee temperature tracker, lactation bots for breastfeeding mothers to carefully reserve times and spaces, digital symptom checkers, COVID screenings and testing for local children with convenient ways to self-schedule appointments and receive results, testing alerts in the Emergency Department, and a daily CHOP check-in tool for employee wellness.
Akhter explained how the teams look at the usage of healthcare services being offered, such as testing and vaccine sites, to make important decisions. “Through careful analysis of data, we found it best to base COVID-19 testing on the locations of our patients and families, so our vaccination sites are closer to where our employees reside. This allowed us to accelerate vaccine distribution while reducing overhead costs and staff required to carry this effort out.”
DEI and Digital Health Strategy
Community outreach, education and recruiting plays a huge role in understanding the patient population at CHOP. For instance, many of Hawthorne’s speaking engagements often concentrate on the importance of women and minorities in the science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics fields. “The earlier we can get to these audiences, the earlier we can expose them to these professions and capture their interest,” she stated.
Akhter also highlighted how recruiting patterns are critical. “We worked with Human Resources to expand recruitment in historically black colleges and universities and the National Society of Black Engineers. We provide great opportunities, such as our IS Co-Op Program, and are developing a data literacy curriculum to introduce students to this field and provide opportunities to equalize the playing field.”
Senior leaders have always been focused on creating and executing on strategies aimed at addressing social determinants of health and improving patient care within their different populations; however, as digital medicine, innovation and other technologies are advancing, it will be critical to consider how the organization's digital health strategies will evolve to equitably serve diverse populations and communities. In these efforts, the roles of the CIO and Chief Data Officer will be critical.
Tammy Jackson is a senior associate supporting the Information Technology Practice with WittKieffer, a global executive search firm dedicated exclusively to organizations that improve quality of life in health care, education, the life sciences and the not-for-profit sector.
