Quantifying the impact of the social determinants of health featuring Socially Determined
As part of our ongoing discussion series, Under the Same Sky, Abner Mason, founder and CEO of SameSky Health, met with Dr. Trenor Williams, CEO and co-founder of Socially Determined, to talk about the importance of social risk data. The conversation focused on the value of quantifying the impact of the social determinants of health (SDOH) and actions that health plans can take to improve health outcomes, reduce health disparities, and track measurable results. View the recording below.
The gaps that currently exist in understanding someone’s overall health is inhibiting our ability to meet members where they are, provide great care, and engage them in a healthcare journey. According to Dr. Williams, the average adult spends 90 minutes under the direct care of a physician in any given year. This means they spend 525,510 minutes elsewhere, and the current healthcare system is taking on all the risk to know their members well enough to diagnose, treat, and maintain a positive healthcare journey using only those 90 minutes of information. Taking on that amount of risk financially would be considered crazy in any other industry. We need to acknowledge that we currently don’t know enough about our members to take on this much risk.
“We need to start thinking about how we can make progress, build meaningful solutions, and start to quantify the social determinants of health. It can’t just be a phrase we use. We’ve got to make it real!””
The healthcare system can’t succeed with a one-size-fits all approach. For example, Dr. Williams notes, every member that has diabetes is completely different, and they each have different barriers to care. Socially Determined uses a combination of three different types of data to construct a precise social risk score about an individual. Those data collections are:
Publicly available data: This helps identify data at a community level and learn about the areas and resources.
Purchased/licensed data about places: This collects both clinical data (Federally Qualified Health Center’s, pharmacies, clinics, hospitals, etc.) and social data (grocery stores, food banks, fast food restaurants, etc.) to determine what is available to the member and what resources they don’t have.
Identified level data: This is commercial, marketing, financial, and legal information all at an individual level.
By combining the three different data sources, Socially Determined quantifies and creates social risk insights at the individual level for every single member. They gain insight into food insecurities, housing instabilities, transportation risks, health literacy challenges, and financial strains all at a personal level to create risk scores. These risk scores then give the ability for health plans to know the different drivers of risk. For example, you would be able to tell if a member’s food insecurity is because of affordability, accessibility, or food literacy. Getting to know your members at the individual level will drive member engagement, connect resources to the community, close gaps in care, and drive health equity so that all members get the care they need and deserve.
Gathering the right analytics and understanding social risk at the member level will show health plans which areas are impacting their businesses the most. That information will help plans know how to make efficient decisions that will create effective measures and outcomes. Being able to use identified data and quantify what a member’s risk looks like will help health plans know how to act.
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