Tech Target: Aligning Social Determinants of Health Work With CMS Rules
Tech Target recently interviewed Katie Hren, MPH, LCSW, associate director of Cedars-Sinai’s Community Connect Program, about how Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is addressing patients’ social determinants of health in light of a related 2024 requirement by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Social determinants are factors such as housing, food security, income, transportation and interpersonal violence that can cause people to experience more health challenges and outcome disparities.
Hren told Tech Target a team of Cedars-Sinai social workers, nurses, patient navigators and physicians introduced a health screening and referral system to identify patients’ needs years before the CMS requirement went into effect.
“If you come to us with a broken leg, we’re here to fix that broken leg,” she said. “Now we’re being asked to [ask], ‘Do you have safe spaces to recreate or rehab your broken leg if you need surgery?’”
Hren told Tech Target Cedars-Sinai has had success connecting patients with resources that help improve their wellbeing, despite clinicians juggling many responsibilities and feeling pressed for time.
“We’ve overcome a lot of those challenges through really great staff engagement and through community partnerships,” she said.
Hren told Tech Target Cedars-Sinai asks patients about more topics than those required by CMS. Rather than paring down the questionnaire, staff members insist on going above and beyond to meet the diverse needs of their patient community.
“If we don’t ask these other questions, we’re going to be missing all of these patients and their needs, and they are going to fall through the cracks,” she said.
Click here to read the complete article from Tech Target.