The following story was written for Forbes by Senior Contributor, Bruce Japsen:
Health plans that contract with state Medicaid programs are moving to address social determinants of health by paying for affordable housing, food vouchers to purchase fresh vegetables and education screenings at the doctor’s office.
But challenges remain from inadequate funding to the lack of data sharing between medical care providers, insurers and community organizations, a new report from the nonprofit The Institute for Medicaid Innovation shows.
“Despite the increasing focus shown in our report on the role of social determinants on health care and outcomes, more needs to be done to create systems to address unmet social needs, especially finding sustainable funding to support these programs,” The Institute for Medicaid Innovation’s executive director, Jennifer Moore, said in a statement accompanying the report called “Innovation and Opportunities to Address Social Determinants of Health in Medicaid Managed Care.”
The report comes as medical providers, insurers and policymakers including high-ranking officials in the Trump administration increasingly see the need to address social determinants of health as a way to improve healthcare and reduce costs. Supporters of spending on ways to address social determinants reason “non-medical factors” of patients like their “housing, education, food insecurity, and poverty can adversely affect population health,” the report says.
There are more than 70 million Americans covered by Medicaid thanks in part to the expansion of such benefits under the Affordable Care Act. Nearly 70% of these Medicaid beneficiaries have their care managed by health plans operated by dozens of health plans including Aetna, Anthem, Centene, Cigna, Molina Healthcare, UnitedHealth Group and most Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans.
There are many emerging success stories. And here are some outlined in the report such as: