Hi, I'm Lina Heng, and I'm joined by Raj Madhure,
an SDOH expert.
Today, we'll be discussing social determinants of health
and their impact on population health outcomes.
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
It's a pleasure to have you.
So let's start with the basics.
What are the specific SDOH
that we need to address in our population, Raj?
SDOH are the social conditions that people have
that can impact their health outcomes.
There's a growing recognition in the healthcare industry
that if I don't address an individual's social care needs,
they can't be healthy.
So we address these needs individually,
and then we look at how we're doing
in improving those at a population level.
That's good to know.
So how can we actually obtain this data
so that we know what the impacts are?
We start by screening.
The best practice in our industry
is for providers and health plans to screen individuals,
at the point of clinical care,
to be asking them about their social care needs.
The industry has standardized around Prepare
as the screener that everyone uses.
And then post screening, we have the referral itself.
What referrals are made,
information associated with the referral
and then, ultimately, how that individual was served.
We can then enrich that data with predictive analytics,
using the information that's publicly available,
to make sure that we're helping the right people
in addressing their needs.
That makes sense.
Now, I'm curious, how can we actually use that technology
to improve our understanding
and implement those effective interventions?
I think the thing to remember is that hospitals
have been doing social care for years.
There used to be phone books
that would be sitting at the hospital reception.
Over time, you had databases and spreadsheets,
but fundamentally it was the same thing.
By using a closed-loop referral workflow,
we can collect, analyze, and share information on SDOH factors.
We can use predictive data
to identify those individuals who are at risk
for poor health outcomes and then target interventions.
And then we can wrapper that around other types of programs
that Optum and others do, things like telehealth
to improve the individual's access to health care
and to address barriers like transportation.
That makes sense. Now, I'm just curious,
how can we actually engage our employees and stakeholders
so we can implement the solution?
One of the things our customers are sometimes surprised by
is how much social care happens out in public.
We are doing press releases and community events
alongside every implementation.
The fact is, none of this works
unless the community is aware of what we're doing.
And what's really neat is a lot of times
we're plugging into relationships
that our customers have out in communities.
This could be social groups,
church organizations that they are engaging with
in their personal lives.