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Can Pa. provide more health data to Lancaster County? Local stakeholders make their case

Rae-Ann Ginter, director of the Health Informatics Division at the Pa. Department of Health, introduces the state’s Data Modernization Initiative during a workshop at Landis Place on King on Friday, Oct. 11, 2024. (Photo: Tim Stuhldreher)

Twenty-one representatives of local nonprofits, health systems, educational institutions and government agencies gathered Friday morning at Landis Place on King to offer their answers to a critically important question.

What data, if you had it, would most enhance your ability to improve public health in Lancaster County?

Working in three groups, they come up with prioritized lists. Prompt blood lead screening results. More information on overdoses, fatal and non-fatal. Mental health indicators. Reportable diseases.

Proposals for enhanced local health data were written on post-it notes during the workshop.

The data needs to be granular, they said — for example, provided at the Census tract level or, for blood lead testing, patient by patient, so local officials can follow up. And it needs to be provided promptly, not months or years after the fact.

Listening and taking notes were officials involved in implementing the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s Data Modernization Initiative, part of a national multi-year project launched and funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

The effort is being led by the department’s Health Informatics Division, created in January. Over the next few weeks, officials will look at the recommendations and requests and evaluate to what extent they can be implemented.

Commissioner Alice Yoder

Hopefully, the result will be local organizations gaining more access to real-time, actionable health data, county Commissioner Alice Yoder said.

It was Yoder who convened Friday’s workshop, which took place at United Way of Lancaster County’s VITA office at Landis Place on King. Among the organizations represented were three of the county’s four health systems, the School District of Lancaster, Lancaster city, the Lancaster County Redevelopment Authority, Lancaster EMS and Union Community Care. Several other organizations that were invited were unable to attend, Yoder said.

Data is one of Yoder’s ongoing passions, stemming from her long tenure as director of community health at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health, her role until she won elective office last November.

Year in and year out, she said, she would find herself frustrated by the lack of real-time data. Then, in 2020, the pandemic brought the issue to the fore. Local organizations cooperated and did the best they could with the limited data they had, “but it wasn’t ideal,” she said.

That’s one of the reasons she ran for commissioner, she said, and it’s why, when she reached out to the Department of Health shortly after taking office, she was excited to hear about the Data Modernization Initiative.

Rae-Ann Ginter directs the department’s Health Informatics Division. It is charged with ensuring “secure and timely access” to high-quality data and encouraging its use in formulating effective public health policy.

Her team has set up an enterprise software platform and integrated a range of key health data sources. It is continuing to work on centralization and standardization, and also is beginning to look at how to share the data more easily with local partners — hence Friday’s workshop.

Brenda Buescher of Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health, second from right, discusses LG Health data needs during a breakout session. (Photo: Tim Stuhldreher)

The day before, her team had met with representatives of Pennsylvania’s municipal and county health departments. (There are four of the former, seven of the latter.) Friday’s dialog was the first in a county without a health department. It was done at Yoder’s invitation, and if it’s fruitful, the department will look at reaching out to other counties, Ginter said.

The state restricts the data it provides to counties without health departments, due to its interpretation of privacy laws and other factors. The situation results in the kinds of frustration that Yoder described. The hope is that the Data Modernization Initiative can help.

Yoder favors creating a Lancaster County Health Department and campaigned on the issue. The county’s two other commissioners, Ray D’Agostino and Josh Parsons, have consistently opposed the idea, citing concerns about cost and red tape and saying the state’s laws around health departments are too inflexible.

The main benefits of a health department, Yoder said Friday, would be data and coordination of services. In lieu of one, she said, it makes sense to pursue those goals by other means.

Ginter said her team will do its best and will be up front about what is and isn’t feasible and why. The Health Informatics Division’s steering committee is meeting toward the end of the month, so she should be able to send Yoder some initial feedback in November, she said.

If information can be provided, that will involve setting up the appropriate IT mechanisms, so those projects will have to be scheduled and prioritized. Additionally, recipients will need to sign data sharing agreements outlining what is provided and how it can be used, Ginter said.

(Photo: Tim Stuhldreher)