Sacramento, CA — Today, The Children’s Partnership (TCP) released a new publication, From Silos to Linkages: Improving Outcomes for Vulnerable Youth Through the Wise Use of Information Technology, which focuses on the potential of information technology to improve health and wellness outcomes for vulnerable populations such as young people living in foster care. Building on two previous TCP reports, this Issue Brief summarizes the potential for electronic information exchange across providers to enhance care coordination and improve outcomes, highlights current efforts at the state and local level to achieve these results, and identifies high-priority policy issues that, if resolved, would move California substantially toward the goal of appropriate information exchange between programs and providers to serve vulnerable youth.
“California is poised to leverage the tremendous potential of information technology to help the state’s young people who need coordinated, informed care,” said Stefanie Gluckman, Health Policy Manager at The Children’s Partnership and co-author of the issue brief. “With recent technology and policy developments, we finally have an environment in which care coordination facilitated by information technology is possible. By appropriately and securely linking systems and programs, relevant decision-makers can have efficient access to the information they need to most effectively coordinate and deliver care for the child,” she added.
The Issue Brief’s release coincides with a briefing in Sacramento, sponsored by The Children’s Partnership and Sierra Health Foundation. The briefing will bring together leaders from the pubic, private, and nonprofit sectors to review progress of the efforts that are currently underway in California, and discuss how to advance the policy reforms and recommendations detailed in the Issue Brief.
###
