A tool developed by the parent organization of Saint Mary's Medical Center promises to help northern Nevada health organizations better target their disease-prevention efforts.
The mapping tool, which Catholic Healthcare West is beginning to make available for use by other health organizations in Washoe County, identifies the socioeconomic factors that are most commonly linked to poor health.
And it maps the data by Zip Codes, allowing health organizations to develop strategies on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.
Now health-care organizations are beginning to track available services on the map to see whether clinics and other facilities are located where they are needed most.
It's more than an intellectual exercise. Since starting the research in Nevada, California and Arizona five years ago, Catholic Healthcare West has found that residents of neighborhoods with poor scores are twice as likely to be hospitalized for conditions such as asthma, pneumonia or congestive heart failure that could be managed in an outpatient setting.
And in a cost-conscious health industry, that's a big deal.
Catholic Healthcare West estimates it spent $261 million in its most recent fiscal year treating people for conditions that can be managed in other settings.
Some of the socioeconomic factors mapped by Solucient LLC, which is owned by Thompson Reuters, are obvious. People with low incomes are less likely to seek medical care. People without health insurance are more likely to need hospitalization for treatment of chronic conditions because they don't use primary-care options.
But the study digs more deeply into the factors that cause some parts of cities to be dramatically less healthy than others.
Take neighborhoods with relatively high numbers of people who don't speak English as their first language. They are more likely to be confused about instructions following a hospital discharge or may not be able to read instructions to care for themselves if they have a chronic condition, Solucient executives say.
In Washoe County, the tool known as the "Community Need Index" finds that a wide swath extending from downtown Sparks to the Meadowood neighborhood of south Reno presents a combination of socioeconomic factors that create a high need for health services.
The greatest need, the study indicates, comes in northeast Reno (Zip Code 89512), which carries the highest possible score in the Community Need Index.
Neighborhoods in southwest Reno and Spanish Springs, meanwhile, carry low scores. (To see the entire map, including early efforts to chart the location of clinics and other facilities, go to www.chwhealth.org/cni.)
At the bare minimum, the technology allows health-care professionals to get a better handle on the needs of the region, says Michael Johnson, vice president of community health and mission integration for Saint Mary's.
"If you don't know where the problem is, you can't fix it," he says. "We know we have to focus our resources where they matter the most. This allows us to be smarter in how things are done."
But Johnson says neighborhood-by-neighborhood understanding of health needs also will allow professionals to precisely target their effort to reduce health risks.
Billboards that discourage tobacco use, for instance, might be located in low-income neighborhoods where smoking is more common.
Johnson says the mapping also will help to identify "food deserts" locations in the metro area that aren't well-served by traditional grocery stores with their fresh fruits and vegetables.
The Food Bank of Northern Nevada, meanwhile, hopes to use the mapping tool to fine-tune its distribution.
"The index may be an invaluable tool in our ongoing efforts to identify and target urban neighborhoods and rural communities that are underserved by the emergency food distribution network, so we can plan to bring services to the areas in the region most in need," says Cherie Jamason, president and chief executive officer of the Food Bank.
