Innovation + Accountability

One thing I'm certain of: Health is intricately interwoven with social determinants. Of course, sometimes illness strikes randomly, but you can read myriad studies that show if you're poor and uneducated - to name just two elements - you are much more likely to have health problems.

So I was very excited to read the announcement that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will explicitly test whether addressing the social conditions that affect health can lower healthcare costs and improve the quality of care.

Those who know me are aware that I have long advocated a move away from fee-for-service healthcare and towards models that incentivize providers to focus on prevention. This new effort by CMS represents a move in that direction. Moreover, it attempts to directly link social factors to the overall health of a community, with the premise that, according to CMS, "systematically identifying and addressing the health-related social needs of beneficiaries impacts total health care costs, improves health, and quality of care."

The program is called the Accountable Health Community Model.  It will have three different program tracks, one of which particularly caught my attention.  This track focuses on community navigation services to ensure that a patient's needs are met after a referral. I can tell you from direct experience at Casa that navigations are a valuable tool to improve outcomes for patients who might otherwise not access care due to barriers like language, poor health literacy, and - sometimes, unfortunately - by organizations that aren't eager to assist self-pay patients.

I also like the name of the model - Accountable. It speaks to the shared responsibility all of us have to keep our communities healthy and whole. That's an attitude that would go a long way to curing what ails us.