RISE looks at recent headlines concerning social determinants of health (SDoH).
Regenstrief Foundation grants $4M to standardize SDoH data in EHRs
The Regenstrief Foundation announced this week that it awarded LOINC and Health Data Standards at Regenstrief Institute $4.4 million toward their efforts to standardize SDoH data into electronic health records (EHRs), work the foundation said is critical to advance health equity.
“Social determinants of health are foundational causes of poor health outcomes,” said D. Craig Brater, M.D., president, the Regenstrief Foundation. “Health inequity is pervasive. Standardizing social risk factors data in EHRs and integrating this information into clinical care is an important step toward meeting health disparity challenges.”
Social needs data is rarely integrated with clinical care in a patient’s EHR, and when it is documented, it’s in varied formats and terminologies, making it “at best cumbersome and at worst impossible to use,” explained the foundation.
The funding will support a four-year project in which LOINC, Health Data Standard at Regenstrief, and Health Level Seven (HL7) International’s Gravity Project, a national public collaborative that has been leading the development of SDoH interoperability standards since 2019, will focus on data standards for a variety of social risk domains, such as neighborhood safety, access to green space, food access, adverse childhood experiences/toxic stress, weathering, minority strain, immigration status, and history of incarceration.
HHS shares ‘first-of-its-kind’ study findings on disparities in health care costs and outcomes from cigarette smoking
Tobacco control policies substantially benefit some racial and ethnic populations more than others, according to a new study from the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
The study found that while individuals in specific racial and ethnic populations have lower ever-smoked rates compared to white adults and make more attempts to quit, their medical spending associated with smoking was twice as high. They also had a 41 percent higher rate of having multiple chronic conditions associated with smoking compared to white people.
“It has been clear for decades now that smoking cigarettes has serious, deadly health effects. The federal government continues to work on encouraging people to quit, or not start using tobacco at all. However, this new study shows how much work there is still to do,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in a statement. “Some racial and ethnic populations pay disproportionally higher costs and experience worse health outcomes related to tobacco usage. HHS will continue to do its part to advance health equity and decrease disparities, including by providing policy makers with the tools that they need.”
The agency said the study findings support President Biden’s April 2023 Executive Order, which urged policymakers to consider the distributional effects in cost-benefit analyses required in the rulemaking process.
Penn State Health announces stroke health equity initiative
Penn State Health, a multi-hospital health system serving patients and communities across Pennsylvania, has launched an initiative aimed to advance stroke health equity among their patients by addressing the health disparities that impact their treatments, access to care, health outcomes, and patient experience.
“Some racially and ethnically diverse communities don’t have a high level of trust in the health care institutions that serve them,” said Heather Doyle, program director for health equity, Penn State Health, in the announcement. “As a result, Penn State Health has chosen to focus on stroke prevention in these communities.”
The program aims to promote health equity through the entire stroke care process from primary prevention through recovery.
Study reveals significant gap in behavioral health care access
While behavioral health conditions, such as mental health or substance use disorders, impact millions of people across the country, most are going without treatment, according to a new report from Milliman. The report, commissioned by Inseparable, a mental health advocacy group, found that only 33 percent of Americans with a behavioral health condition received treatment in 2021.
The research team used data from health insurance claims and nationwide surveys to gain state-by-state insights on care accessibility for mental health and substance use disorders. Access to behavioral health services varied widely across the U.S., as well as across health care coverage types, noted researchers.
Their findings include:
- Over 24 percent of individuals across three major health care coverage types, including commercial, Medicare Fee-for-Service (FFS), and Medicaid, had diagnoses for at least one behavioral health condition in 2021.
- The prevalence of diagnosed behavioral health conditions was highest in Rhode Island (32 percent) and lowest in Texas (15 percent).
- Of the 33 percent of individuals who did receive behavioral health treatment in 2021, the highest rates of behavioral health specialist care were among those with Medicaid coverage (44 percent). Individuals with Medicare FFS coverage had the lowest (15.7 percent).
- Across the health care coverage types included in the study, about eight percent of emergency department (ED) visits nationwide included a diagnosis of behavioral health condition in 2021, with the highest rate of ED visits with a behavioral health diagnosis among individuals with Medicaid (12.9 percent), followed by Medicare FFS (7.3 percent) and commercial (6.9 percent).
- Mental health provider shortages were identified in every state, and more than half (52.7 percent) of the U.S. population lives in counties designated as Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas.
- Psychiatrists are less likely to accept health care coverage compared to other specialties.
“While access is a complex topic and involves additional considerations beyond those included in this report, many metrics for which data are available point to aspects of access that could potentially be improved,” wrote the researchers. “The findings underscore the urgent need for strategies to increase the availability and affordability of behavioral health services, particularly in states with high prevalence rates and low provider availability.”