With the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in full swing, millions of low-income, previously uninsured Americans now have access to healthcare. Medscape shares findings from a recent study by three research institutions—Manatt Health Solutions for The Commonwealth Fund, The Skoll Foundation, and The Pershing Square Foundation—that assesses the impact social needs of low-income individuals has on the effectiveness of their healthcare treatment and outcomes.
The study assessed various healthcare programs across the country that help meet patients’ basic social requirements and treat their medical needs. Essentially, the study found treating a patient for diabetes comorbidities has limited benefits when he doesn’t have regular access to healthy meals or a warm, dry place to lay his head.
As a locum tenens provider, you may accept assignments in underserved communities where social needs impact patients’ health. According to the researchers, linking social services and medical care can consistently lead to better healthcare outcomes.
“If you have a low-income patient who can’t access the care they need because they don’t have heat or they don’t have a home, it becomes part of the physician’s or the clinic’s responsibility when it’s looking to improve health and contain costs,” said Deborah Bachrach, JD, the study’s lead author and an advisor of policy and strategy on healthcare reform for the state of New York.
Health Leads, a program assessed in the study, allows physicians to “prescribe basic resources like food and heat, just as they do medication,” the organization’s website states. It is partnered with 30 major health systems and medical universities across the country, and is facilitated in clinics and community health centers across five major metropolitan areas. To date, physicians and volunteers have addressed at least one need for 90 percent of patients, according to the report.
Additionally, the Healthy Homes II Asthma Project in King County, Washington, aims to improve conditions for chronic asthma sufferers by offering patient education, training in self-management, personalized asthma action plans, and case management. Ultimately, through medical and social intervention, physicians are able to “improve health status and reduce asthma-related medical care utilization among low-income children [with persistent asthma] age 3 to 13.”
The study goes on to suggest public and private financial-incentive plans for physicians and facilities that incorporate social-resource programs into care models may yield a more widespread facilitation of this healthcare methodology. According to the report, the ACA is expected to dramatically reduce spending on medical treatment for underinsured and uninsured patients, leaving an estimated $13 billion available for social-resource programs.
Bachrach expects physicians will see the medical and economic benefits of instituting social services that lead to more comprehensive, all-encompassing patient care.
“We lay out the business case for providers to include these interventions at their sites in their clinical models … so that providers have a reason for investing, paying for, and underwriting the cost of the social intervention,” she stated.
Physicians may benefit from partnering with a local community organization that agrees to come to the private practice or clinic a couple days a week. In this scenario, the non-medical follow-through and case management would fall more on the organization and less on the physician. Ultimately, this study suggests physicians could begin to play a much larger role in linking social and healthcare reform in the years to come.
