Ellenville Regional Hospital
Ellenville Regional Hospital (ERH) faced a significant operational challenge: CMS requires screening for social needs across five specific domains, and with roughly 40,000 outpatient encounters annually, leadership initially assumed they would need to embed care navigators at every point of entry in their outpatient network to collect the necessary social determinants of health (SDoH). As a small rural hospitl, this presented a strain that existing resources couldn’t easily absorb.
Through Hixny’s social assessment tool, integrated directly into ERH’s electronic health records system through Hixny’s patient records snapshot, the hospital found a more sustainable path. The tool, configured to capture only CMS-required information and, when preferred, sent to patients by email or text ahead of their appointment for self-completion, reduced the burden at the point of care.
ERH is also working with Hixny to surface trends from the collected data, enabling leadership to identify areas of concern and deploy resources more strategically. For a community hospital operating with lean staffing, the solution offers a way to meet federal requirements and meaningfully address patient needs without a significant operational lift.
