What You Should Know:
– Equality Health launches Social and Cultural Risk Assessment (SCRA™) program to address social determinants of health (SDoH)
– With Equality Health’s SCRA program, social determinants act as any other quality metric, with a far less burdensome reporting process.
Equality Health, a whole-health delivery system, has pioneered a comprehensive cultural care program that enables providers to identify and address social determinants of health (SDoH). Through the launch of its proprietary Social and Cultural Risk Assessment (SCRA™), which is now deployed in more than 1,400 primary care practices, Equality Health is fundamentally changing care delivery to achieve greater health equity for marginalized and underserved communities.
How Equality Health’s SCRA Program Works
Administrative burden and a lack of incentive structure are two considerable barriers for providers who are looking to transition to a “whole-person” care delivery model. With Equality Health’s SCRA program, social determinants act as any other quality metric, with a far less burdensome reporting process.
From the outset, providers participating in the SCRA program are:
– Trained on workflow changes and cultural competence;
– Educated on appropriate coding for social determinants
– Rewarded with quarterly incentives; and
– Equipped with the necessary tools, such as questionnaires and technology
SCRA Outcomes/Results
Equality Health, a whole-health delivery system that pioneered this program, has seen incredible results just in the first few years of its rollout, such has the ability to predict future emergency room costs for patients and streamlining the coding process to cut down administrative burden for providers.
This standardized approach not only makes value-based care more feasible for providers to implement, but it enhances parity among physical and behavioral healthcare including social support. With more than 3,000 assessments completed monthly, SCRA helps predict future emergency room costs using an academically validated approach while also mapping to existing ICD-10 codes to reduce administrative burdens. Further, SCRA serves as a signal to patients that their healthcare provider is interested in improving their whole-health, which fosters patient trust and strengthens the physician-patient relationship.
Why It Matters
The COVID-19 pandemic and recently-heightened focus on racial injustice has shined a bright light on health disparities, particularly within Black and Latino populations. Healthcare providers in underserved areas are wondering, “How can I begin to close the gap and work towards greater health equity in my community? What’s my role in solving this problem?”
“SCRA augments the medical oriented risk assessment process for clinicians and results in meaningful, actionable patient-sourced information that helps improve quality of care and outcomes,” said Dr. Mark Stephan, MD, MBA, Chief Medical Officer at Equality Health. “The doctor-patient relationship has long been recognized as a key element to improving health outcomes, and we are striving to provide practices with the tools and support to bridge the gap between social and health needs.”
