Unite Us Partners with Healthix and Regional Social Care Networks to Improve Quality of Life for New York City and Long Island Residents

NEW YORK, July 10, 2023 — Unite Us, the nation’s leading software company enabling cross-sector collaboration to improve people’s health and well-being, and Healthix, the largest public health information exchange (HIE) in the nation serving New York City and Long Island, are partnering to address drivers of health (DOH) in collaboration with the region’s leading social care networks. Through their partnership, Healthix and Unite Us will provide the technology infrastructure needed to enable communication between healthcare systems and social care networks working to address unmet needs for services such as food, benefits, housing, transportation assistance, and more.

This collaboration is more important than ever, as New York State is amending the 1115 Medicaid Waiver to more explicitly prioritize the integration of social care and health care into the NYS Medicaid program, enabling community-based organizations, behavioral health providers, and other small practitioners to use data-driven insights to inform their practices and interventions. Integrating health and social care will improve health equity across New York’s underserved populations. Studies indicate that medical care only accounts for about 20% of the variation in health outcomes for a population, whereas 80% can be traced back to DOH, which affects a wide range of health risks and outcomes.

“Our partnership with Healthix is a natural fit, and the need to collaborate across healthcare and wellness services has never been greater,” said Dan Brillman, CEO and Co-Founder at Unite Us. “We are aligned on a shared mission of improving the lives of individuals across NYC and Long Island by supporting community-led systems of care, building trust in these communities in the same way that trust is facilitated between patient and provider, and adequately and accurately capturing the whole picture of a person’s health.”

“We welcome the opportunity to partner with Unite Us to help better establish a holistic level of care when it comes to providing our customers with key information both inside hospital walls and outside into the community,” said Todd Rogow, President and CEO at Healthix. “The Unite Us software will create a seamless and convenient way for our customers to access a network of health and social care providers who will connect them to available, community-based resources that provide other levels of care, like housing, employment, and behavioral health assistance.”

Unite Us and Healthix are already collaborating in large social care networks with Public Health Solutions, which provides critical resources directly to New York City’s most underserved populations. “It is essential to establish a single technology ecosystem and roadmap for the region that is compatible with the requirements for healthcare-community partnerships. The technologies that Healthix and Unite Us offer support interoperability and critical case management, closed-loop referrals, and population health capabilities,” said Lisa David, President and CEO at Public Health Solutions.

Social care networks like Public Health Solutions’ WholeYouNYC reliably connect people to community resources and services such as food assistance, housing and shelter, and individual and family support with real-time, measurable outcomes data. These networks enable policymakers to understand the impact of standardized outcomes for social care interventions, which, combined with clinical outcomes from HIEs like Healthix in New York State, provide a more complete picture of community health. The shared vision and aligned approach between Healthix and Unite Us for NYC and Long Island, particularly for the most underserved populations, allows outcomes-focused collaboration to support community members’ health and overall wellness while eliminating systemic barriers to care.

Nonprofits, community-based organizations, and other providers who want to connect their clients and patients to resources within the network can reach out to uniteus.com/contact/.