Providers Call for Improved Social Determinants of Health Data

November 16, 2020 - More robust and standardized social determinants of health (SDOH) data will improve SDOH initiatives and patient care, according to providers in Insights by Xtelligent Healthcare Media’s most recent report.

Social determinants of health have repeatedly shown to have a large impact on patient health outcomes, more so than the clinical care a patient receives, leading many provider organizations to see the importance of addressing these challenges in their patient populations.

Most provider organizations see a direct impact of social determinants of health initiatives on chronic disease management (88 percent) and population health (80 percent). But survey respondents also point to the impact on provider satisfaction (51 percent), emergency care (47 percent), budget and finance (47 percent), and acute care (44 percent).

Despite the wide range of impact addressing social determinants of health can have, only 54 percent of provider organizations report currently have a strategy in place to address these factors. Insights from Social Determinants of Health Strategies and Initiatives highlight common challenges facing organizations working toward successful SDOH strategies. Primarily, organizations face a lack of robust and standardized data about these challenges.

Unlike many clinical factors, social determinants of health are not routinely documented. So provider organizations are left to determine how they will capture this information and record it in the EHR.

“Each of these social determinants of health tools uses different language to ask the same question. When you say the patient is in poverty, what does that mean? You can’t use the dollar amount. If you are in a high cost of living area, it’s not going to equate,” pointed out one registered nurse during qualitative follow-up.

Without standard methods to capture social determinants of health data, providers are left with a hodgepodge of information to sort through.

“You aren’t going to be able to distinguish between an individual experiencing homelessness who is an insulin-dependent diabetic who doesn’t have a place to store her insulin or somebody who has safe access to insulin,” the nurse continued. “We’re working to get more codes into the system to get big data.”

Improving data collection strategies will help providers address social determinants of health more successfully as they can ensure the accuracy of the information. They will have more reliable information to effectively refer patients to the right resources.

Higher quality data will also allow for more robust population-level data on social determinants of health, allowing for more robust analysis on the impact of SDOH on patient outcomes. Provider organizations can then concretely point to the impact of initiatives on patient health outcomes with the data to support these claims.

Right now, only 47 percent of provider organizations are using patient outcomes as a measure of success for social determinants of health initiatives. A similar pattern is seen across hospitals (56 percent) and physician groups (54 percent).

Thirty-seven percent of respondents are using community partner satisfaction and 27 percent report patient stories being measures of success for their initiatives. More so than with other healthcare initiatives, organizations are leveraging anecdotal measures of success because many organizations, and the healthcare industry at large, still struggle with collecting systematic information on social determinants of health.

“It’s apparent that we are not getting enough data about the social determinants of health because of coding rules. There’s a lot of system barriers that are getting in the way,” concluded the nurse.

Improved collaboration across the industry would ensure more standardized data collection, allowing providers to adequately address the needs of patients and ultimately effectively impact patient health outcomes.

Social Determinants of Health Strategies and Initiatives also highlights hospital, health system, and physician practice motivation for social determinants of health strategies and outcomes hospitals and physician groups are focusing on to understand success in social determinants of health initiatives. The full report can be found here.