Essentia Health wins national Quality Excellence Award

DETROIT LAKES (KDLM) – Essentia Health has won a national quality excellence award.

The National Association of Accountable Care Organizations gave Essentia the Leaders in Quality Excellence Award for “outstanding efforts among ACOs working to improve the quality and safety of patient care and advance population health goals.”

Essentia’s project submission was “Connected Communities: addressing social determinants of health and health inequities through partnership and technology.”

“Addressing the social determinants of health is a high priority at Essentia, especially food insecurity,” said Debbie Welle-Powell, chief population health officer. “We know food is medicine, and access to healthy foods impacts one’s overall health status. By creating new alternative food sources and working in partnership with our communities, we are better able to support our patients’ needs holistically.”

What started as a small pilot was scaled rapidly to 74 primary care and pediatric clinics during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when need has been especially high. The questionnaire was sent with nearly 1 million encounters and completed by 46% of the patients seen in those encounters. Essentia learned that more than 40,000 patients identified at least one social need.

Through this work Essentia connected more than 2,300 patients to new food, transportation or financial resources and referred patients to more than 80 community-based organizations.