May 09, 2019 Shelley Riser, Vice President, Consulting
Services & Clinicial Innovation
Nearly
30 years ago, I began my healthcare career as a nurse. I didn’t use the term
‘social determinants of health (SDoH)’ and I didn’t need a fancy algorithm to
tell me that someone without reliable transportation, adequate housing or
access to fresh fruits and vegetables struggled more to maintain good health. I
saw first-hand and every day the influence these factors wielded.
Despite
the great compassion that called me to healthcare, helping patients with
housing, clothing and food were problems that were challenging back then, based
on the lack of data and resources that were available.
Fast
forward to today – the convergence of SDoH awareness, research and healthcare
innovation has helped to change landscape for the better. Research and
technology are helping to reveal the depth of the impact social factors have on
health and healthcare costs. We now have research and evidence to support what
we have long suspected:
·
Social determinants matter more to health outcomes than medical
services
·
SDoH drive more than 80 percent of
health outcomes
·
68 percent of patients face
at least one barrier related to social determinants. Of these, 57 percent have
a moderate-to-high risk for financial insecurity, isolation, housing
insecurity, transportation, food insecurity and/or health literacy
At the
same time, payment reform increasingly emphasizes value over volume, driving
healthcare organizations to seek out new and better ways to improve health
outcomes. It’s the perfect storm for innovation.
Around
the country, pockets of physicians, hospitals and health plans are rising to
the challenge and improving the health of people and populations they serve by
helping to address life’s most basic needs – housing, clothing, food, isolation
and transportation – with some surprising results. As physicians and
healthcare organizations pick up the mantle and treat from a holistic
perspective, people and populations are becoming healthier, cost and quality
metrics are improving and physicians are becoming happier.
For
example, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin developed an integrated, scalable,
pediatric social health approach to systematically screen for address essential
human needs as a standard part of clinical care. The internal pilot program revealed:
·
Unmet social health needs correlate with increased healthcare
utilization and poor health prior to interventions.
·
Social health screening correlates with statistically
significant decline in the total cost of care for patients with identified
social needs.
·
Cost savings for patients with two to three identified social
needs was more than $1,000 per year.
Further,
the pilot explored how physicians and patient families viewed social health
screening as part of standard care delivery. It found:
·
99 percent of providers believe that addressing unmet social
needs has the potential to impact health outcomes.
·
93 percent prefer to work in a health system that has a process
for addressing social needs as part of standard care
·
90 percent of families believe being connected to community
resources could improve their child’s and family’s health
·
91 percent of families prefer to come to a clinic that asks
about their resource needs
SDoH Innovation
Turns
out, I need fancy algorithms after all. Algorithms leveraging deep-learning and artificial intelligence excel
at consuming large, seemingly unrelated, data sets and pinpointing patterns at
speeds, scale and precision never imagined. These patterns, in turn, help
reveal a complete patient view to physicians and care managers to help identify
social needs barriers and community resources to address them.
To
learn more about healthcare organizations, physicians and care managers who
successfully use social needs data to better manage patient populations,
personalize healthcare for individuals and improve outcomes and costs, download
Geneia’s white paper, Social Determinants of Health: From
Insight to Action.
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