Timothy Sullivan
Sep 4, 2018 · 2 min read

I’m the director for the 2–1–1 system in Washington State and I’m wondering how many States are partnering with their 2–1–1 systems to provide access to the SDOH. If you aren’t aware, 2–1–1 is a 3 digit dialing code similar to 9–1–1 which provides an easy number to call when people need access to human services. The FCC approved the use of 2–1–1 in July of 2000 and as of 2018, over 94% of the United States population has access to 2–1–1 services.

2–1–1 is a free public service that links people to social services, assess social need, maintains a comprehensive social service database, refers to service providers and in many States offers application assistance to programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). These are the same strategies listed in the Kaiser Family Foundation survey of strategies used by MCO’s.

Hundreds of Millions of public dollars from State health systems are going towards recreating services like 2–1–1 to access the SDOH. These services are created through internal development or through the use of private software vendors, many whom scrape their resource data from the internet where it is already publicly available through 2–1–1.

In Washington State, 2–1–1 is provided through seven regional call centers and maintains a statewide database of over 23,000 services. All of these services are accessible online through a publicly accessible searchable resource database. Washington 2–1–1 has been a partner with the Department of Health since 2013, sharing resource data with Community Health Workers and identifying and promoting Chronic Disease Self-Management resources.

Washington 2–1–1 is also partnering with several regional Accountable Communities of Health to exchange resource data with a software vendor that is providing a care coordination platform using the Pathways Hub model. In addition, 2–1–1 is exchanging resource data with the Washington Healthcare Authority, Washington State Practice Transformation Hub https://waportal.org/resource-locator to map the location of local resources.

In State’s like Minnesota and San Diego County California, 2–1–1 is driving innovation by creating Community Information Exchanges (CIE’s) with State and County Health Systems. CIE’s encompass both health information and community information in closed loop service referrals. 211Info in Oregon just announced a partnership to create a CIE and Washington 2–1–1 is evaluating a new software platform that will allow the creation of a CIE.

    Timothy Sullivan

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