Healthy Bottom Line: The Trouble With SDOH Programs and the Secret to Improving Them

On this episode of Healthy Bottom Line, Chief Executive Healthcare spoke with Erica Coletti, CEO of the Alliance for Better Health. We discussed some of the current problems associated with programs addressing social determinants of health (SDOH) and how the Alliance’s social Independent Practice Association (IPA) model can help tackle these issues. We’re also talked about the financial benefits hospitals and health systems can see when implementing policy changes that seek to improve SDOH programs.

“The number of mergers among rural hospitals has increased significantly since the mid-2000s, in parallel with the accelerating number of closures,” the authors wrote. “Although mergers may enhance rural hospital survival, they may also have effects on quality of care.” To analyze changes in quality of care for patients at rural hospitals that merged, they compared the changes with rural hospitals that remained independent. They used multiple data sources to identify mergers between 2009 and 2016 and a difference-in-differences (DID) design to compare the changes in quality. Quality was measured using all-payer discharge from the 2008 to 2018 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State Inpatient Databases.