Up until somewhat recently, socioeconomic data wasn’t part of the conversation on how best to improve health outcomes. Where people live, learn, work and play – commonly known as social determinants of health (SDOH), are today, considered essential factors for gaining a more complete picture of members – revealing how members’ daily lives impact their mental and physical health.
Take Larry and Bill for example, on the surface they appear equal, they are the same age, live in a similar area, both are recently enrolled in a health plan and both are pre-diabetic and have COPD. With age, location and health risk so similar, using only this information, they would be headed for the same intervention program. But, add in social determinants of health data and you have a very different picture:
– Different access to emergency healthcare
– A significant difference in earned income and education level
– Larry lives alone, and Bill is surrounded by family
– They live in very different neighborhoods
In this infographic created by LexisNexis, Larry has significantly more risk than insights gleaned from claims only based analytics.Â
 