How Technology is Addressing SDOH

Social determinants of health (SDOH) has become one of the biggest buzzwords in healthcare. In the quest to provide more complete care-and lower healthcare costs-stakeholders across the healthcare industry, are realizing that treating a patient doesn’t have to begin or end in a hospital.

SDOH encompass a variety of factors, from housing availability to water access to income to food stability-not typically factors considered by most stakeholders.

There’s no question that SDOH affect health outcomes, but stakeholders are grappling with how big a role they should take in addressing them. As Benjamin Zaniello, chief medical officer at Collective Medical, a network for care coordination, put it, addressing SDOH is “not simply a healthcare problem. It’s a societal problem. We have not yet fully addressed food and shelter and security in either rural areas like Kentucky or urban areas like Chicago or New York. To expect hospital physicians to fix those problems within their four walls is an unreasonable expectation.”