Socially Determined, a social risk analytics company, has launched a new platform feature offering visibility into the drivers of health for minors.
Available through Socially Determined’s analytics platform SocialScape, the My Minors app aims to provide healthcare organizations with data to design and advertise targeted social programs and benefits that can improve care and outcomes. Historically, accessing this data has been difficult due to incomplete collection or privacy protections, according to the company. Socially Determined, a 2022 Fierce 15 honoree, taps into publicly available information, as well as eligibility data on members, to deliver these insights.
The way it works is Socially Determined builds a file with demographic information on a given member, including where they live. This is overlaid with geospatial mapping tools that can reveal how far a patient needs to travel to their primary care provider, for instance. The company’s algorithms aimed at social demands then create a risk profile with a score based on 45 data elements, which payers can integrate those insights into their population health tools. Socially Determined can also recommend what actions payers can take to benefit patients.
“The whole goal is not just to understand what risk looks like at a person or population level… now I have an understanding of the impact of social risk on healthcare outcomes, on healthcare costs on quality measures,” Trenor Williams, M.D., CEO and co-founder, told Fierce Healthcare. Importantly, he added, the data also lets organizations do something to address patient needs.
My Minors was designed in close collaboration with existing customers to identify historical blind spots, the company said. The app is available to all customers that include minors within the populations they serve. The company plans to demonstrate the new app and its larger SocialScape platform in a webinar on November 19.
More than 37.6 million children in the U.S. are enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to CMS. Kids are particularly vulnerable to the social determinants of health because of their crucial stage of development. Interest in SDOH has grown across the sector alongside signals from CMS, Williams said. Models like ACO REACH that tie reimbursement to health equity have played a part, Williams said. The impact of addressing social factors on outcomes and quality scores has also become clearer.
“It feels like we are building momentum broadly as a healthcare industry in this space,” Williams said.
This shift has also coincided with the rise in value-based care. “The more that we move into true value-based care… this is a risk conversation,” Williams said. “We should tie all payment to outcomes, period.”
All Socially Determined customers take on risk in some way, per Williams. Most customers are payers, plus some are providers and life sciences companies. Ideally, Williams hopes to see cross-sector collaboration to harness the data insights: “The fact that we can hit all three of those sectors is meaningful and hopefully has the greatest impact.”