What You Should Know:
– Geisinger inks a partnership Aunt Bertha to launch a new social care platform, Neighborly for Pennsylvania residents.
– Powered by Aunt Bertha, Geisinger’s Neighborly platform provides residents in Pennsylvania the ability to easily search and connect with organizations that provide social services including food, housing, childcare, transportation, utility assistance, healthcare, financial assistance, and other needs.
Geisinger, one of the nation’s largest health service organizations has announced a partnership with Aunt Bertha, a search and referral platform of social service organizations to support the launch of Geisinger’s new social care platform, Neighborly.
Growing Importance of Social Determinants of Health
Social determinants of Health – such as where people live and work – play a significant role in a person’s overall wellbeing. Ensuring individuals have access to the proper social care services is key to any healthcare effort – yet navigating the web of providers and coordinating care for patients is often a challenging process. That’s why Geisinger is now partnering with Aunt Bertha to help healthcare providers streamline the process of connecting patients with vital social services.
How Neighborly Works
Powered by Aunt Bertha, Geisinger’s Neighborly platform provides residents in Pennsylvania the ability to easily search and connect with organizations that provide social services including food, housing, childcare, transportation, utility assistance, healthcare, financial assistance and other needs. The platform also helps social care providers more easily and effectively coordinate care for clients in need of multiple forms of social assistance. With Aunt Bertha’s technology, organizations can now provide a simple and easy path to refer patients to free and reduced-cost services in their local communities. Since 2015, nearly 130,000 Pennsylvanians have used Aunt Bertha to connect to social services.
Why It Matters
Currently serving more than 3 million residents throughout central, south-central, and northeastern Pennsylvania — as well as counties in southern New Jersey — Geisinger has long been a leader in defining strategies for addressing social determinants of health (SDoH) such as where individuals live, work, and socialize. After exhaustive research into the social care landscape and all available solutions over a two-year period, Geisinger selected Aunt Bertha to create their new community resource network. After initially planning for a community-by-community rollout of the platform across an 18-month timeline, the healthcare provider realized it needed to rapidly accelerate its deployment in the wake of COVID-19 and its impact on Pennsylvania communities. With Aunt Bertha’s experience and understanding of the social care landscape in Pennsylvania, as well as its extensive nonprofit network that was already in place in Pennsylvania, Geisinger was able to move swiftly from a pilot in Lackawanna County to a social care platform available to every community in just 18 days.
Pilot Phase Results
Following the launch of the platform’s pilot phase in March this year, more than 2,400 neighbors have been able to connect with, and benefit from, social care providers on Neighborly in just a 4-month period. Even in its early stages, the platform is changing the way Geisinger cares for its patients, serves its members, and partners with the community. Search data on the platform provides new insights on the services Pennsylvanians need the most, uncovers coordination gaps that currently exist, and guides the allocation of resources.
“Neighborly opened its doors in March amid a global pandemic with a laser focus on making it easy for our neighbors to connect with the resources they need close to home,” said Brian Ebersole, Senior Director of Springboard Health at Geisinger, “the partnership with Aunt Bertha was the right choice for our communities and our organization.”
