Overcoming Social Determinants Of Health During the COVID-19 Era
Healthcare providers are under immense pressure to be running at peak performance 24 / 7, which is an even more daunting task during a global pandemic. It’s difficult to keep up with the demands of working with increasing patient volumes, information that needs to be optimized, and much of the administrative and IT staff working remotely.
Like many industries have been ‘hit’ harder with the pandemic, the same can be said for poor, minority, and underserved communities. More attention needs to be focused on social determinants of health (SDOH) so health systems can address these groups better and keep them healthy.
The problem? Managing different data types and ensuring they are being integrated into clinical practices.
The University of California San Francisco is looking to change that, and with no shortage of data, they believe a more concentrated effort is needed to help drive change. The UCSF researchers explained, “While data on social conditions, such as lack of access to adequate food, housing, and transportation, may be obtained during clinical encounters, they can also be derived from nonclinical sources such as local and national government datasets,” and “Once these data are incorporated into the healthcare system, they facilitate the NASEM report’s recommendation of increasing the health sector’s awareness of social risks of patients and populations.”
The researchers outlined ‘Five A’s’ and what they mean for healthcare IT and informatics strategies:
Awareness: Using a social informatics approach will allow healthcare providers to identify social risks within their patient groups.
Adjustment: When working to address social barriers, care and treatment decisions may need to be shifted. The EHR should be optimized to incorporate SDOH data to help prompt care based on a patient’s possible social risks.
Assistance: Now more than ever, healthcare systems are looking for new ways to reach and connect with their patients, using both social care and community resources. Clinical and EHR workflows need to be reimagined to be more efficient at documenting social assistant that is being offered to their patients, such as case managers or housing placement needs.
Alignment: Providers and the community need to build partnerships to help create a common link between community run organizations and their health organizations.
Advocacy: With the synergy between community groups and the health systems, policies and resources should be created and developed to aim to address both health and social needs.
And yes, most experts agree a person’s health is a combination of genetic, environmental, lifestyle, and cultural factors. Providers are trained to screen their patients for various factors to evaluate their risk for certain conditions. But sometimes social factors are difficult to predict or control. This includes factors such as access to healthy foods, career and/or educational resources, violence exposure, emotional state, economic status, and even the degree of education. But this doesn’t come without its challenges- mainly with current technologies. AI software shows promise though, but systems will needs to look at their current interoperability levels, EHR workflows, and their organization’s ethics in regards to algorithms, analytics, and where resources are being allocated, all of which need to be addressed for this to truly happen on a widespread level.
If and when we can get these it will lead to healthier communities- and who doesn’t want that?
Here at Extract, we believe in providing an unbiased software that makes it more efficient for providers to understand their patients’ needs and social challenges to help them produce better health outcomes. Reach out today if you would like to learn more.
Sources:
https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/new-health-it-discipline-social-informatics
