The Importance of Identifying Social Determinants of Health Opportunities Among Patients with Rare Diseases
New Pilot With Highmark Focuses On Members With Multiple Sclerosis
Over the past several months, team members at AllianceRx Walgreens Pharmacy and Highmark, through collaborative brainstorming sessions, sought to identify innovative concepts focusing on patient care and improving overall health and outcomes. One of these is the current Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) pilot, which we launched April 19, 2021.
Rick Miller, BSPharm, MSPharm, MBA, CSP,
Vice President, Clinical and Professional Services
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define SDOH as conditions in the environment – in which people live, learn, work, play, worship and age – that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality of life outcomes and risks1. Twenty percent of a person’s health and well-being is related to access to care and quality of services. The physical environment, social determinants and behavioral factors drive 80% of health outcomes. These may include financial resource strain, social connections, safety, transportation needs, health literacy, food insecurity, and housing stability.
Through this pilot, we hope to improve a patient’s overall health and well-being by identifying and removing barriers to their care. The pilot kicked off with Highmark members who have a multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis and use AllianceRx Walgreens Pharmacy as their specialty pharmacy. SDOH-trained nurses from AllianceRx Walgreens Pharmacy reach out by telephone to eligible Highmark members and offer to administer an SDOH survey. We provide the results of each survey to Highmark to determine how they may intervene with their members and affect change on any SDOH item identified from the survey. AllianceRx Walgreens Pharmacy will contact Highmark members at six-month intervals and assess each member utilizing the SDOH tool developed for the pilot.
Understanding a patient’s physical environment, social determinants and behavioral factors will assist in providing a specific plan of care to each member who completes the SDOH survey. The pilot is designed to understand the success rate of a specialty pharmacy in administering the SDOH survey, as well as the ability of the member to have any SDOH-identified issues addressed. Over time, we will analyze the data from the pilot for success and hope to expand this program to other disease states in the future.
Patient outreach is a priority at AllianceRx Walgreens Pharmacy. Our pharmacy already contacts each of our patients prior to the start of therapy and before each refill to assess clinical appropriateness, as well as to gather patient-reported outcomes. Expanding assessment capabilities to include SDOH factors is a natural progression and underscores our commitment to patient care. It also demonstrates how AllianceRx Walgreens Pharmacy innovates and collaborates with healthcare partners such as Highmark – as both companies have the shared goal of improving the quality of life of the patients and members we are fortunate to serve.
1 cdc.gov/socialdeterminants/index.htm
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