The new business model for health requires healthcare organizations to address not only medical problems, but social problems like hunger, loneliness, and trauma. That’s because these types of issues — known as the social determinants of health (SDOH) — are key impediments to achieving the outcomes healthcare organizations are now given incentives to deliver.
An Effective Way to Tackle the Social Causes of Poor Health
The new business model for health requires healthcare organizations to address not only medical problems, but social problems like hunger, loneliness, and trauma. While these social determinants of health are foreign terrain for many healthcare organizations, that hasn’t stopped them from entering the space. The result is a large number of well-meaning but badly designed and badly performing programs that target these social determinants of health (SDOH). Unlike these, The University of Pennsylvania “IMPaCT” standardized community health worker program demonstrates consistent improvements in quality while reducing hospital days by 65%, outcomes translate into two dollars in return for every dollar invested annually in the program. This article describes how to design and run a successful SDOH and provides links to resources.