Leveraging Health Information Exchange (HIE) Data to Demonstrate the Impact on Health Outcomes of Community Based Organization Interventions: Case Studies of Housing Placement and Medically Tailored Meal Program

Top Things to Know

HIE systems may provide scalable infrastructure for evaluating FIM programs.

Medically tailored meal participation was associated with reduced healthcare utilization and improved clinical measures.

Stronger causal study designs remain needed to confirm effectiveness.

Summary of Conclusion/Findings

This retrospective pre-post evaluation examined whether Health Information Exchange (HIE) data could be used to assess outcomes from housing and medically tailored meal programs. Among 786 medically tailored meal participants, inpatient admissions decreased 20%, emergency department visits decreased 18%, length of stay declined 5%, and improvements were observed in hemoglobin A1c and body mass index. Housing program participants also experienced reductions in emergency department use and increases in outpatient care. The authors concluded that HIE infrastructure can provide longitudinal outcomes data useful for evaluating community-based interventions. Because the design lacked a control group, findings reflect associations rather than causal effects.