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How to Use Social Determinants of Health More Effectively in Your Behavioral Health Organization
Behavioral health has a data problem. Most providers are collecting dozens of valuable data points from their patients daily, but little is being done to leverage these data to improve patient care and support providers.
One key example is the current use of social determinants of health (SDOH), a set of data points required by most practices to collect. An estimated 80% of SDOH data is stored in an unstructured and unusable format. The added administrative burden of collecting SDOH data has been frustrating for many clinics, but if used more effectively, SDOH data could be an excellent first step in unlocking the power of data.
History of SDOH
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), SDOH are the conditions in an environment where people are born, and where they live, learn, work, and play that affect a wide range of health and quality-of-life risks and outcomes. SDOH was established by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2005, but the concept only recently started becoming a common discussion point among practitioners.
There is a movement in the US healthcare community to address health equity issues as well as the clear ties between social factors and mental health. In June 2021, there were at least 58 bills before Congress that mention SDOH. These bills aim to improve data analysis, improve access to health for specific communities, and improve SDOH as a whole.
While many organizations, such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, are exploring ways to make SDOH data more accessible and actionable, it is still a difficult and uphill battle. However, as an individual provider organization, there are simple ways to be more mindful and to use SDOH data more effectively.
Automatically Include SDOH Data in Treatment Plans
A common issue with the collection of SDOH data is that this information is collected in the initial patient intake, and then it’s never updated or addressed again. By doing so, care providers often don’t factor SODH into a patient’s ongoing treatment plan or consider changes to SODH data points when the patient’s circumstances change. This lapse in data collection could result in missing the need to make a major shift in ongoing treatment.
One resolution to this problem is to automatically include SDOH data points in patient treatment plans, putting the patient information front and center. This will make it much more likely that patient information will be up-to-date and will regularly remind the care provider about certain factors that might be impacting the patients care.
Set Clinical Standards Around SDOH
If you were to ask 10 clinics what their top 3 SDOH data points would be, you would get roughly the same answer: housing, employment, and education. However, various lists exist that rank anywhere from 5 to 15 different SDOH factors that could impact patient care, and certain data points might vary in importance based on the location of the clinic, age of the patient, and other factors. If there isn’t a set standard that determines exactly what, when, and how you collect this data, a simple step is to set a clinical standard and formal process around data collection.
Certain billing codes align to common SDOH factors and the more a clinic can align their data around what most practices are doing, the easier it will be to pool data from across clinics in the future to create better and more effective treatment plans.
Use an EHR That Allows Flexibility for Data Collection, Forms, and Reports
Being able to customize reports, treatment plans and data entry forms is incredibly important if you are taking steps to use data more effectively. Make sure you are working with an EHR that allows you the flexibility to collect and use the data as you see fit so that you can be strategic in your patient care approach.
Create Regular Longitudinal Reports Around a Patient or Population
Creating reports over a period of time can help care providers see how changing SDOH data affects a patient’s care and treatment plan. For example, if SDOH data is reported correctly and updated over time, a care provider can see how addiction issues were impacted by housing and employment, providing more information to make better care recommendation based on that individual’s specific circumstances. Pulling longitudinal reports on a population can help a care provider identify trends and better understand how health inequality issues impact a specific population.
The healthcare community is a long way from a universal, anonymized data repository, but I believe this will be the future of healthcare. The good news is that your average practice is collecting thousands of valuable data points every year. We need to stop thinking of this data as an administrative burden and start thinking of it as valuable information that will improve healthcare and improve patient outcomes.
Khalid Al-Maskari is CEO of Health Information Management Systems.
The views expressed in Perspectives are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Behavioral Healthcare Executive, the Psychiatry & Behavioral Health Learning Network, or other Network authors. Perspectives entries are not medical advice.
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