Reference no: EM133339893
Assignment:
The health system for which you work would like to reduce health disparities associated with social determinants of health (SDOH). SDOH, as defined by the Department of Health and Human Services, "are the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks." As such, SDOH include the physical environment in terms of pollution and crime, social environment, workplace conditions, income, education level, type of insurance (or lack of insurance), lifestyle, proximity to care, among others.
As an analyst for the health system, executive leadership has asked you to provide a recommendation on where it should focus the system's its efforts to achieve the aim of reducing health disparities associated with SDOH. Specifically, the health system would like to decrease the relatively high use of the ED by minority populations and the relatively lower "usual source of care" for minority populations.
There are numerous challenges for succeeding in this effort, but the principal challenge is that the health system cannot directly change most of these SDOH. For example, it cannot change the insurance status of the patients. Which SDOH can the health system can change or at least influence? Your task is to (1) provide a recommendation for which SDOH to try to change or influence and (2) provide a recommendation for the approach to encourage change.
As you make recommendations for both the SDOH to target and the approach for doing so, you may want to consider:
- The use of care coordinators,
- Health education programs,
- Which patients to target (i.e., among which types of patients can you have the biggest impact where type of patient could be based on demographics, healthcare utilization patterns, chronic conditions, etc.),
- Where services are provided relative to the minority populations, and
- The time horizon the executive leadership has in mind to affect a change (assume that this timeline is relatively long, 5 years).
You make think of other possibilities. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list.
Be specific. For example, if you want to recommend health education programs, don't just say provide education programs. What is the focus, topic of these programs and what are you trying to achieve, affect?
Note that while the health system executive leadership is not looking for an immediate return on this investment, there are fiscal constraints (i.e., there would be a budget or acceptable amount of net costs). Mostly, leadership is trying to learn about where it can have an impact and at what cost. Learning is an important goal for leadership to help the health system be better positioned to succeed in non-FFS reimbursement environments.