Medical care determines only 20% of overall health—while social, economic and environmental factors determine 50% of overall health?* Those numbers are staggering, especially when you take into account that the greatest impact on our health comes from areas that the healthcare industry has not traditionally addressed. With the current emphasis on value-based care, more and more healthcare organizations are beginning to see the need to treat the whole patient and not just the condition.
Although traditional approaches to care that rely on clinical and claims data are important, they do not provide that extra layer of insight that enables healthcare organizations to see those external influencers creating barriers to improving patient health outcomes.
Getting Familiar with Non-medical Health Influencers
The ability to address social determinants of health (SDOH) within care management workflows will enable health plans to personalize individual care plans. As health plans begin to understand patient barriers in areas like address stability, social isolation, healthcare literacy, economic health and transportation, they can help care managers identify additional needs that should be addressed and services to offer patients.
Other benefits of implementing social determinants of health insights in the care management workflow are the ability to:
- Identify opportunities to optimize treatment outcomes.
- Enable the tailoring of outreach efforts to engage patients before complications develop or worsen.
- Allocate community resources for effective care management.
Broaden Your Care Management Scope
Care managers can modify their outreach efforts when they are alerted to the areas where patients are challenged. As the U.S. healthcare system continues its current shift toward value-based care, use of SDOH data enables the industry to address the patient as a whole, not just as a medical condition.
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*Bridget C. Booske, et al, “Different Perspectives for Assigning Weights to Determinants of Health”, (February 2010)
