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There’s a growing awareness among employers, community advocates, and the public health sector that issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) must be addressed in the healthcare ecosystem if we are to implement genuine value-based care (VBC).

The healthcare industry does a lot of things right, but it has struggled to influence the social conditions, behaviors, and daily activities occurring outside medical facilities that directly impact the health and well-being of patients and plan members. By integrating the episodic care and SDOH platforms, providers and payers have both a comprehensive view of the individual and resources that allow them to impact behaviors at the street level.

It has been clear for years that social determinants of health (SDOH) – factors such as education, economic and housing stability, community support, and access to transportation – have a disproportionate impact on health outcomes. Research shows that SDOH accounts for up to 80% of health outcomes, while medical care – which costs the U.S. nearly $4 trillion annually – accounts for the balance.

Schwartz will be responsible for driving sales and marketing initiatives, business development and strategic partnerships.  He most recently served as the general manager of the Blues Portfolio at Alegeus, where he and his teams were responsible for achievement of significant revenue and margin targets.

If payers and providers could leverage a comprehensive medical and social longitudinal health record (LHR) that includes SDOH data and enables them to connect patients with community support resources, they could reduce healthcare costs while improving lives. Such an approach would make SDOH data securely available to clinicians at the point of care, giving them a holistic view of the patient.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it's the importance of having quality, verified data accessible to care providers and public officials to help combat the spread of a communicable disease. Even before the pandemic, efforts to capture and integrate SDOH data across the healthcare continuum have been plagued with interoperability issues, culture gaps and lack of coordination.

Data exists that can help patients achieve better healthcare, but the industry itself must ensure that this data is available, accessible, and understood. Organizations and providers often have access to some of the data in question; the key, though, is connecting healthcare stakeholders and patients to complete information that enables informed decisions, which the industry has not yet perfected.

Technology can make it possible to collect and synthesize data from different sources and in different forms (structured and unstructured). Screening tools can be augmented with external data sets, such as the 12 Dimensions of the Social Environment, for which the CDC has created a directory.