What You Should Know: - CVS Caremark announced an expansion of its efforts to address health disparities among patients, starting with certain conditions including sickle cell disease, HIV, and cardiovascular disease. - CVS Caremark is working with its clients to create health equity strategies for PBM members with certain conditions that disproportionately affect patients of color. The company will also use its broad reach and collaborate with community partners to determine the
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Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) | News, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Leveraging SDOH in Post-Pandemic Risk Modeling to Overcome Distorted Care Projections for 2021 and Beyond
The uncertainty and risk created by pandemic-related disruptions in care have health plans in uncharted water when it comes to relying on claims data and utilization patterns to inform their risk models. But while these disruptions weakened the reliability of traditional risk models, they also created opportunities to deepen and enrich member data by leveraging consumer and other data related to social determinants of health (SDoH) that can deliver significant performance and accuracy
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Unite Us Acquires Health Analytics Platform Carrot Health
What You Should Know: - Unite Us, a New York City-based company connecting health and social care services, today announced the acquisition of Carrot Health, an action-oriented health analytics company focused on removing barriers to health and optimizing care. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. - The combination of predictive analytics powerhouse Carrot Health and Unite Us’ end-to-end social determinants of health products will further deepen
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Cerner Launches Social Determinants of Health Solution to Advance Health Equity
What You Should Know: - Cerner today announced a new solution, Cerner Determinants of Health, designed to help providers address healthcare inequities. - Cerner Determinants of Health is a dashboard and supporting set of tools, integrated into the Cerner electronic health record, to help clinicians pinpoint disparities and suggest goals and resources within the patient’s care plan to help target intervention opportunities. Leveraging SDoH to Advance Health Equity The
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WellSky Acquires Healthify to Enhance Social Determinants of Health
What You Should Know: - Seamless coordination between providers, community-based organizations, and payers is the key to delivering value-based care at scale. To better connect providers, identify social determinants of health, search for social services, and coordinate care with community partners, WellSky has acquired Healthify. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. - Together, WellSky and Healthify will connect
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Unite Us Launches Social Care Solution to Improve SDoH
What You Should Know: - Unite Us today announced the release of its new end-to-end social care solution that will accelerate both the growth and impact of social care and services in local communities nationwide. - The new solution will expand far beyond patient referrals, to now identify and predict social care needs in communities, coordinate necessary care, leverage data to further improve systems at large, and enable sustainable and impactful funding of social care nationwide. Why
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Marshfield Clinic Health System to Launch Rural Health Equity Initiative
What You Should Know: - Marshfield Clinic Health System, one of the largest rural, integrated health systems in the country, is partnering with NowPow and a broad range of community organizations to connect patients with local resources to improve their health and quality of life. - Marshfield Clinic Health System and NowPow are working together to build a comprehensive network of agencies and programs serving northern, central and western Wisconsin, ensuring that individuals have access
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Priority Health Launches “Full Lifecycle” Social Determinants of Health Initiative
What You Should Know: - Priority Health, a nationally recognized nonprofit health plan, announced today that it has launched a first-of-its-kind “full lifecycle” social determinants of health (SDoH) initiative. - Recent research has shown that SDoH, or social factors like access to healthy food, transportation options and financial security, may be responsible for up to 80% of health outcomes.Priority Health’s first-of-its-kind program
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Applying A Hedge Fund Mentality for Investing in Social Determinants of Health
While I am a practicing clinician, I am a firm believer that improvements in healthcare most often come from borrowing the best ideas from other business models. For example, I have sometimes borrowed from software company and payer colleague insights to describe value-based care (VBC) reimbursement as a subscription model. This model would provide more consistent revenue and allow organizations to better weather challenging times like a pandemic. For providers, this would allow freedom from the
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The Crucial Role of SDOH Data in Value-Based Care
Roughly $4 trillion is spent on healthcare annually in the U.S. Despite this massive expenditure, roughly 80% of health outcomes are attributed to social, behavioral and environmental factors, known as social determinants of health (SDOH). What has been far less clear is how providers and payers can fully harness SDOH data to proactively manage the health of patients and members. Technological and cultural barriers have made it difficult for disparate parties such as
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