The Resourceful platform can be accessed online or via a smartphone app.
In its less than three years of existence, Essentia Health's public resource directory has been the conduit for 19,000 referrals to social services with more than one-third of those referrals resulting in services being accessed.
The directory, Resourceful, is available online at weareresourceful.org. It is used on average 500 times per month to make connections to services such as food banks and housing assistance across the Duluth, Minnesota-based health system's footprint in Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota. The platform tracks referrals so Essentia knows when a person or organization "closes the loop" by accessing or providing services.
Liz Summy, regional executive for the American Hospital Association, in sunglasses, presents, from left, La Sheenlaruba Tyacke, Essentia Health community health worker; Emily Kuenstler, Essentia community health director; Dr. David Herman, Essentia CEO; and Jill Doberstein, Essentia community outreach program manager, with the Dick Davidson NOVA Award. The award was for Essentia's Resourceful program.
The directory recently earned Essentia the Dick Davidson NOVA Award from the American Hospital Association. The annual award honors hospital-led collaborative efforts that improve community health.
Emily Kuenstler, Essentia's community health director, says the health system developed Resourceful with Findhelp, a company that builds branded social services platforms. She says Essentia chose its branding to reflect more than the fact that the platform offers access to a bounty of resources.
A search on the Resourceful website brings up entries for available low- or no-cost services. The platform has entries for 5,000 services.
Collaborative effort
Kuenstler also notes that Essentia intentionally kept its name off the platform. While the system took the lead in the launch of the platform, building and updating the directory has been a collaborative effort with community partners, including other health care providers and a local United Way chapter.
Those partners have representatives on Resourceful's oversight committee, which meets monthly. "We set goals each year to decide what geographies to focus on, look at our data and try to improve our closed loop rates, etc.," Kuenstler explains. "It's definitely like a shared governance model with our several partners."
Resourceful and its listings of almost 5,000 free or low-cost services can be accessed by anyone. All users do is type in their ZIP code and then click on the form of assistance needed, such as food, housing or transit. The screen will then show entries for specific assistance programs. The entries have details about what sort of help is available, information on how to contact each provider, and a map with providers' locations. The platform can be accessed online or via a smartphone app.
Essentia has integrated Resourceful into its electronic medical records. The health system screens patients for social needs at primary care and pediatric appointments and upon hospital admission. When those screenings reveal unmet social needs, staff members can immediately tap into Resourceful and check for services. The referral is then noted and tracked in the patient's medical records.
Kuenstler says that while Essentia's nine community health workers make the most use of Resourceful, physicians, paramedics, case managers and others also are tapping into it to guide patients to services.
"I think it's really exciting to see this being integrated into all types of care that we provide in many different roles," Kuenstler says. "We're trying to extend that care to the community and connect people with the resources that they need to be healthy."
Training and outreach
Before and since the platform launched in December 2021, Kuenstler says Essentia has offered training to staff on how to access and use it. That training is live and via video. Essentia also sends out reminders about the platform and about training opportunities in internal communications.
"That's something that is definitely a lesson learned from our program," Kuenstler says. "It's not like you just do a training when it launches. It's a continual reinforcement of this being available. We use all the communication methods we have at our disposal."
To spread the word about Resourceful outside of Essentia, the system's community outreach manager meets with community groups to introduce them to the platform and with community organizations to teach them how to get their services listed.
Once an organization has a listing, the group can take ownership and revise and update that listing on its own. Resourceful automatically generates a prompt every six months to a contact for each listing asking if the information is still accurate.
Among examples of Resourceful's use that Kuenstler can point to are a person who was living in a camper and hadn't eaten for a day. One of Essentia's community health workers used the platform to help that person get immediate food assistance and to apply for housing assistance and federal food aid. Another time, a community health worker helped a patient who lived in a rural community get assistance to rebuild a collapsed well.
Needs indicator
Kuenstler explains that while Essentia and its community partners oversee the entries for local services on Resourceful, the platform also connects users with entries for state and national programs that are in Findhelp's database.
With Essentia in the planning stage of its next community health needs assessments, Kuenstler says metrics from Resourceful are going to be used as key indicators in that process.
"We can see what the community as well as what our staff are searching for, and then utilize that to help us understand where there are gaps in services so we can build our community health needs assessment programs around addressing those greatest need areas," she says.