US-based Activate Care is a digital healthcare company that helps coordinate care between healthcare providers and patients. This can include referring patients to specific services, and addressing issues that affect people’s health like housing and access to nutritious food.
Jenna Simone worked as an Operating Room Nurse for seven years before joining the company. As a nurse, she saw first-hand how patients were returning to the hospital weeks after treatment due to a lack of care coordination and communication between providers outside of the hospital.
In her current role as a Market Director for Activate Care, she uses the Activate CareHub platform to provide community coordination, referral management, data exchange and analytics. “It’s a software platform that connects to existing systems, like the electronic health record (EHR)” Jenna explains.
“All of that data in the EHR becomes actionable in the community, so that local behavioral health, housing supports, and social services can participate in someone’s care in a much more efficient way.
“My role is to take my clinical experience and use it to speak the language of leaders at hospitals and health systems, community health centers, managed care organisations, and social services in new and innovative efforts to improve care.”
Jenna explains that their services have become more necessary than ever due to the pandemic. “Every community across America is facing rising needs like homelessness and hunger. Activate Care is designed specifically to tackle these challenges. We make it easier for people in need to find help, with support from their primary care team and other local heroes, like social workers or community health workers. It is already working to reduce homelessness in states that utilise our platform, like in the state of California.”
In order to address these problems, they created the COVID-19 Response Platform, which includes pre-configured tools to track data for each patient, refer them for the support they need and report on outcomes. This has been made available free of charge to whoever needs it during the pandemic. “The response has been really positive. We do not want to stand in the way of any community that needs our help” Jenna says.
Covid aside, a big focus has been the opioid epidemic, which is a serious public health issue in the US. Data from 2018 shows that 128 people die every day after overdosing on opioids. “It is still bad out there. There are too many people who are really hurting” Jenna says.
“The challenge in addressing substance use disorders is that there is still a stigma attached to this. But people in need actually often need help from a lot of people, and those care providers need a way to collaborate. In Oregon, where the opioid epidemic has hit communities really hard, our tools are helping those communities get more people connected to care.”
Jenna Simone is speaking at Activate Care’s next webinar on December 16. For more information visit Activate Care