A report in the Annals of Family Medicine highlights the importance of integrating social determinants of health (SDOH) data into clinical care. Healthcare providers consider a patient’s reported SDOH in around 35 percent of healthcare decision-making, mostly learned through patient-provider communication and prior knowledge. The study suggests that integrating SDOH screening into the electronic health record (EHR) and allowing clinicians to note observed SDOH in patient-provider communication can improve decision-making. It also emphasizes designing social risk-related EHR tools and data collection workflows to foster and support patient-clinician conversations.
A recent report in the Annals of Family Medicine reveals that healthcare providers take into consideration social determinants of health (SDOH) data in around 35% of healthcare decision-making. The report emphasizes the importance of integrating SDOH screening into the electronic health record (EHR) and enabling clinicians to note observed SDOH in patient-provider communication. SDOH information stored in the EHR is essential, but it is far from as common as verbal communication on the topic.
The healthcare industry has come to an agreement that social determinants of health (SDOH) are integral to understanding a patient’s health and well-being. However, healthcare providers still struggle to integrate SDOH into clinical care. A report in the Annals of Family Medicine revealed that healthcare providers consider a patient’s reported SDOH in around 35 percent of healthcare decision-making. This underscores the importance of clinicians having access to SDOH data.
The researchers found that SDOH screening integrated into the electronic health record (EHR) and allowing clinicians to note observed SDOH in patient-provider communication will be helpful in future clinical decision-making. Healthcare providers can’t learn about a patient’s SDOH from a single source. Clinicians mostly hear about SDOH from patient-provider communication on the topic (76 percent of the time), and they also use prior knowledge of a patient’s social risk factors to make clinician decisions (64 percent of the time).
The researchers conducted a survey of 38 clinicians working at one of 21 safety-net clinics. The survey indicated that healthcare providers consider SDOH when the patient is male or does not speak English. The study considered how knowledge about reported SDOH, gleaned from social determinants of health screenings and risk assessments, actually factors into a provider’s clinical decision-making.
It wasn’t rare for providers to also use SDOH information stored in the EHR, but it was far from as common as verbal communication on the topic. Just under half (46 percent) of providers used SDOH data stored in the EHR to make clinical decisions, and that was most common when data was documented in discrete fields of the EHR.
These findings demonstrate that, although important, efforts to store SDOH data in the EHR cannot be a panacea. Rather, it is how the data is stored and how that fits into the clinical workflow that is important. The researchers suggested that social risk-related EHR tools and data collection workflows should, therefore, be designed and implemented to foster and support patient-clinician conversations.
“The findings presented here suggest that SDOH data sources are complementary and that patient-clinician conversations may be crucial to understanding patients’ relevant life circumstances,” the researchers wrote in the study’s discussion section. “Social risk-related EHR tools and data collection workflows should, therefore, be designed and implemented to foster and support—not replace—these conversations.”
The report found that SDOH factored into clinical decision-making 35 percent of the time. It was more common for healthcare providers to consider SDOH when the patient was male or did not speak English. Healthcare providers aren’t learning about a patient’s SDOH from one single source, the survey added. Clinicians are mostly hearing about SDOH from patient-provider communication on the topic (76 percent of the time), and they also use prior knowledge of a patient’s social risk factors to make clinician decisions (64 percent of the time).
To make SDOH data most usable for providers, it is still essential to consider how the EHR stores SDOH data. “Future research might explore the type of information clinicians consider to be SDOH and how they use the EHR to document and locate this data,” the researchers concluded.
In conclusion, SDOH data is crucial to understanding a patient’s health and well-being. Healthcare providers consider SDOH in around 35 percent of healthcare decision-making. Clinicians mostly hear about SDOH from patient-provider communication on the topic (76 percent of the time), and they also use prior knowledge of a patient’s social risk factors to make clinician decisions (64 percent of the time). SDOH information stored in the EHR is essential, but it is far from as common as verbal.
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