How tech-assisted care coordination can help communities bounce back after severe storms
Shoppers walk past a bare shelf as people stock up on necessities at the H-E-B grocery store on Feb. 18, 2021, in Austin, Texas. Winter Storm Uri brought historic cold weather and power outages to the state. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Care coordination platforms can assist government and other organizations to more efficiently respond to and plan for an increase in residents’ demand for social services amid natural disasters, a new report says.
A 2021 winter storm in Texas, regarded as one of the nation’s hottest states, revealed the critical need for community leaders to proactively manage social services and assistance to ensure residents have the resources they need to handle and recover from weather disasters, according to a recent study.
In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri killed nearly 250 people across 77 counties and left more than 4.5 million homes and businesses without power, in some cases for several days.
“It’s inevitable that we’ll see more of these types of climate-related disasters,” said Halima Ahmadi-Montecalvo, vice president of research and evaluation at Unite Us. Indeed, experts are warning against increased snowstorms in the future as higher temperatures lead to more precipitation.
Many communities are unprepared to handle such disasters, and this study “validates” the importance for government leaders to “move toward strengthening their disaster preparedness” with more proactive systems, particularly with social services and resources for residents, she said.
Social workers and agencies that provide services like housing, benefits navigation and food assistance are often the first sources residents turn to for help during disasters and for recovery support, according to a report released last month by Unite Us.
That’s where tech can play a critical role in enabling more efficient and streamlined communication, case management and service delivery for government agencies, social workers, community-based organizations and other key players trying to support residents’ during times of disasters, Ahmadi-Montecalvo said.
The study assessed how the use of a case-management platform leveraged by more than 300 government, nonprofit, health care and other organizations during Winter Storm Uri could serve as a model for how tech-assisted social care delivery can help public-serving entities proactively prepare for a surge in social service demands amid weather and climate incidents.
For instance, data collected from the platform showed that case managers saw the average number of cases — including those for food assistance, housing and shelter, transportation and legal services — increase from 18.7 per day a month before the storm to 30 cases per day within a week of the storm, according to the study.
Ahmadi-Montecalvo said by leveraging platforms that collect this type of data, agencies can use those insights to more effectively attain and allocate resources in anticipation of future weather events. With evidence of residents’ increase in demand for such services, policymakers can better advocate for funding and other support to meet their communities’ needs, she added.
The study also found that tech-assisted social service care could impact the time it takes for cases to be resolved and rate at which cases are completed. For instance, before the storm, platform data showed that 63% of cases were resolved within 30 days, taking an average of 13 days to be closed.
Case managers saw the case resolution rate increase, despite the average time-to-closure increasing to a median of 18 days during the storm, which Ahmadi-Montecalvo attributed to power outages and other communication disruptions. But data showed that, after such disturbances, the case resolution rate increased by five percentage points, and the time-to-closure of cases declined to seven days.
Those data suggest that assistive service providers and groups were able to adapt and recover to the storm’s impact on resident communication and service requests, likely with the help of the tech platform used to coordinate care among case managers and community groups, Ahmadi-Montecalvo said.
Platforms that enable communication and coordination across sectors can respond quickly to residents’ evolving needs, she said. For instance, social workers and case managers can better identify and transfer residents to services that meet their needs throughout the recovery process, reducing redundancies or errors in organizations’ efforts to link them with services.
Broadly speaking, care coordination networks that enable closed-loop referrals can be particularly helpful for organizations monitoring a resident’s outcome, helping leaders better match supply and demand for resources, particularly as governments are facing increasing cuts to their budgets and funding, Ahmadi-Montecalvo said.
Ultimately, for community leaders and officials, “the study findings “stress that technology can give coordinators the tools to act quickly and proactively [and] not wait until the disaster happens and then react,” Ahmadi-Montecalvo said.