Industry Pulse Survey: Care coordination the biggest challenge to integrating social determinants of health

Social determinants of health continue to be a significant external challenge facing the healthcare industry, according to the 9th Annual Industry Pulse Survey conducted by the HealthCare Executive Group and Change Healthcare.

The Industry Pulse survey polled 185 healthcare leaders, 48.1% of whom are at the president, vice president, and C-suite levels of their organization.

The survey asked respondents how they currently integrate social determinants into population health programs. The leading approach was coordinating with community programs (18.4%), followed by offering social assessments along with health risk assessments (15.1%) and combining nonmedical data (e.g., census, financial, education, geographical) with medical data (13.9%).

In addition to integrating social determinants, the survey asked which non-medical barriers to healthcare respondents were planning to address in the coming year. Nearly two-thirds (63.7%) of respondents said care coordination was the barrier they would address. Other barriers respondents cited included the following common social determinants:

• Transportation (39.1%)
• Food insecurity and access (27%)
• Social isolation (19.4%)
• Housing insecurity (15.3%)
• Financial literacy (8.5%)

Additionally, 17.3% of respondents said their organization would not be addressing non-medical barriers to care within the next 12 months.

The survey also looked at barriers that respondents face in trying to address social determinants in population health programs and in clinical care. Five such barriers were selected by more than 40% of respondents:

• Lack of payment structures (49.2%)
• Effectiveness metrics for nonmedical solutions (48.7%)
• Member/patient adoption of solutions (45.5%)
• Data sharing limitations (42.9%)
• Adding skill sets to address the social determinants (40.7%)

The survey authors noted that although Medicare is reimbursing for some measures to address social determinants, the rest of the industry may not necessarily follow suit.

Other topics covered by the survey include market trends, value-based care, consumer engagement, clinical and data analytics, cybersecurity, and more. Read the full report here.