Shelbyville, IN – April 12, 2023: Major Health Partners (MHP), a leading healthcare provider in Shelbyville and southeastern Indiana, and Unite Us, the nation’s leading software company enabling cross-sector collaboration to improve people’s well-being, are unveiling a new partnership and coordinated care network that will enhance community members’ health and well-being—even outside of hospital walls.
Through this partnership, MHP can use Unite Us’ software to collaborate across sectors and securely connect members with unmet health and social needs to services such as housing and food assistance, transportation, and employment assistance.
“At MHP, we are fully embracing the effort of becoming a true community health improvement organization—one that can make a meaningful and measurable generational improvement in health and well-being in our region,” said Stephen Black, MHP's Director of Behavioral Health and Health Equity. “For MHP to be successful—and for our community to thrive—we all have to reach beyond our four walls and build partnerships to harness the power of collective impact.”
Within MHP, the Unite Us Platform will allow specially trained staff conducting health-related social needs screenings for gaps in care, such as food and housing insecurity, transportation challenges, or other obstacles, to connect with community organizations committed to resolving those issues. The network, however, is not dependent on MHP. Participating organizations can also refer clients to each other even if the people they refer aren’t MHP patients.
Through this collaboration, Major Health Partners hopes to better standardize their sites' social care referral process, allowing for less burdensome workflows for staff members and eventually using the Unite Us Platform to identify and bridge service gaps in Shelby County.
Major Health Partners and Unite Us will securely connect people in need with community-based resources that can be difficult to navigate otherwise. The Unite Indiana network provides a central point of contact where healthcare providers, social service organizations, and individuals can securely access and refer people to needed services that will enable them to thrive and live healthier lives. MHP group of participating organizations is composed of more than 40 community partners from local and regional businesses, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, healthcare organizations, schools, and more, working together to improve the overall health and well-being of Shelby County.
Healthcare, education, and economic success—are all interrelated, says Black. And likewise, social challenges such as housing, transportation and economic stability are also barriers that impede access to healthcare and impact health outcomes. The conjoined efforts of MHP community organizations, the Unite Us Platform, and regional community health partnerships are all intertwined and working hand in hand to get upstream of generational health issues and create a stronger, brighter future for children and grandchildren.
Knowing someone has unmet needs is not enough. Knowing who can meet those needs, what barriers might be in the way of serving those needs, and confirming that those needs are actually resolved is very difficult in today’s fragmented healthcare and social support systems. However, with the software now in place, when an individual is served by an MHP team member or one of the Unite Us network partners, their specific social needs will be noted in the system. If, after obtaining the community member’s consent, a referral for social service is made, the organization receiving the referral will be notified, and that individual’s progress in receiving the service will be recorded. This allows for closed-loop communication, which currently does not exist across the many different organizations in the region.
The Unite Us Platform provides an up-to-date network of community resources and offers insights that will help all network partners identify needs and opportunities to better serve the region’s needs.
“The collective goal of our partnership with the Major Health Partners is to effectively address drivers affecting health and wellness, increasing equitable access to care for all residents regardless of circumstance,” said Kathleen Banfield, State Director at Unite Us. “Major Health Partners and Unite Us efforts will work to redefine the quality, impact, and intersection of health and social care across this community."
The system integrates with MHP's Meditech electronic medical record system and other systems and platforms used by community-based providers. In its first year of operation, Unite Us will have network users from MHP and accept unlimited community-based organizations as partners to join the network free of cost.
Nonprofits, community-based organizations, and other providers who want to connect their clients and patients to services within the network can reach out to uniteus.com/contact/.
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About MHP Major Health Partners is a leading healthcare provider for patients from not only Shelby County, Indiana but also from the southeastern part of the state. Since 1924, Major Hospital/Major Health Partners has grown to offer a wide spectrum of services, leading the region in many areas of healthcare delivery. In January 2017, MHP moved Major Hospital into the state-of-the-art MHP Medical Center, which features larger patient rooms, a concourse design to aid in ease of navigation and a significant increase in parking, which includes an option for valet parking. The new facility is home to 60 physicians and over 1,000 employees and provides one convenient location to patients for their healthcare needs. MHP provides quality care through our unique combination of advanced technology, modern facilities, and individualized service. MHP offers all of the advantages found at the large urban hospitals paired with genuine personal care. That’s how we move healthcare forward in a Major way.
About Unite Us: Unite Us is the nation’s leading software company enabling collaboration across sectors to improve the health and well-being of communities. Unite Us’ secure solutions establish a new standard of care that identifies social care needs, helps connect people to services, and leverages meaningful outcomes data to further drive community investment. Through Unite Us’ national network and software, community-based organizations, government agencies, health plans, and healthcare providers are all connected to better collaborate and meet the needs of the individuals in their communities. Follow Unite Us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.