Can Social Determinants of Health Predict Your Patient ’s Future?

This article was written by Tim Suther, Nicole Hobbs, Jeff McGinn, Matt Turner with Change Healthcare, John Halamka, MD, MS, president of Mayo Clinic Platform, and Paul Cerrato, senior research analyst and communications specialist, Mayo Clinic Platform.By one estimate, social determinants of health (SDoH) influence up to80% of health outcomes. Although reports like this suggest that these social factors have a major impact, thought leaders continue to debate whether they can also enhance the accuracy in predictive models. Resolving that debate is far from simple because the answer depends on the type, source and quality of the data, and the design of the model under consideration.In general, we derive SDoH from subjective and objective sources. Subjective data includes self-reported or clinician-collected data such as patient reported outcomes, Z codes from ICD-10-CM that report factors that influence health status and interactions with health service providers, and other unstructured EHR data. Objective data includes individual-level and community-level data from government, public and private (and consumer behavior) sources; it ’s usually more structured and often derived from national-level datasets.Unfortunately, theresearch on the value of SDoH in predictive models varies widely. Some studies report no appreciable differences when SDoH are injected into models, while others report significant enhancements to predictive power. Unsurprisingly, these varying study result...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs