Majority of Payers Concerned About Social Determinants of Health

A recent survey by Change Healthcare found that a vast majority of payers are focused on addressing social determinants of health as a way to improve outcomes.

“For the past eight years, Change Healthcare has commissioned an online survey in an effort to determine and report on the “pulse” of the health care industry,” the authors wrote in the survey report. “This latest survey… looks not only at marketplace challenges, trends, opportunities, and investments payers report, but also contrasts those findings to what was reported in past surveys.”

The survey was deployed to high-level employees at more that 2000 leading national and regional payers across the United States. These also included members from the government, private, and academic sectors.

“The issue of social determinants of health has become part of every conversation around improving care quality while lowering costs,” the authors wrote. “This concept recognizes that not every healthcare problem can be addressed with a prescription pad or a hospital procedure.”

Survey results showed that more that 80% of payers responded that they are taking steps to address social determinants of health in order to improve value-based care.

Among these efforts, 42% of payers reported that they are integrating community programs and resources to address social determinants of health. Additionally, 33.7% of respondents are integrating medical data with financial and demographic data to granularly manage patient populations.

The report also found that 33.1% of payers are integrating use of social assessments and health risk assessments to identify patients at risk of health issues due to social determinants.

However, the authors noted that fewer payers are actually integrating social determinants into the clinical workflow—with only 21.3% offering training to physicians to identify determinants, and 20.7% using point of care checklists.

“In a value-based model that emphasizes promoting health over delivery of medical services, health care organizations have an incentive to consider providing transportation, helping patients identify or secure affordable transport, coordinating ride sharing, or other potentially effective solutions for such cases,” the authors wrote.

—David Costill

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