Community Information Exchange Timeline

At its most basic level, the goal of a Community Information Exchange is to ensure that individuals can live a longer, happier, and healthier life by ensuring providers can give the best patient care possible and efficiently match individuals with appropriate services.

A Community Information Exchange enables a network of health, human, and social service providers to deliver coordinated, person-centered care by using shared data, common language, and technology to unite providers across sectors. It enables providers to shift away from reactive approaches and toward proactive, holistic, person-centered care by providing access to all available help and support to aid in individual case planning and outcome evaluation.

Service providers across the county are committing to participate in the San Diego Community Information Exchange led by 211 San Diego. This collective approach shows how each provider is carefully considering how the care they provide fits into the broader care delivery system, to better connect individuals to services, and share deeper levels of information.

The San Diego Community Information Exchange was kick-started by funding from Alliance Healthcare Foundation and began with a pilot program of homeless service providers. A second cohort of senior service providers provided a second successful pilot, both of which opened the doors to the addition of other organizations in other partner sectors.

Cross-sector data sharing is gaining momentum as an approach to whole-person care which serves to address all the factors that influence a person’s health. With data in the hands of the service providers they can better address a person’s social risk factors, and better care for patients in the context of their lives.

La Maestra Provides Underserved with Whole-Person Care 

La Maestra Community Health Centers are federally qualified health centers with locations throughout San Diego.  La Maestra employs a holistic, solutions-based approach to health care through the organization's La Maestra Circle of Care® services, which provides primary, specialty care and social services including job training, eligibility and enrollment assistance, microcredit and microenterprise programs, translation, interpretation, transportation, legal advocacy, a community garden, food pantry, after-school and summer programs and transitional housing.

To address no-show rates for appointments at their clinics, La Maestra began leveraging telehealth appointments and found they went from a 50% no-show rate to only 13% in just two years.

“La Maestra is dedicated to mitigating the mental health and substance abuse challenges related to COVID-19, and a huge component of our efforts has been the rapid transition of almost all our providers to NextGen Virtual Visits,” said Zara Marselian, Ph.D., FACHE, La Maestra president and chief executive officer to BusinessWire. “This integration ensures continuity of care as well as increased accessibility and quality of care for all patients, regardless of their ability to pay or visit the office.”