Compendium of medical terminology codes for social risk factors

This spreadsheet contains codes related to social risk factors that we extracted in a systematic search of four medical vocabularies (LOINC, SNOMED CT, ICD-10-CM, and CPT). The spreadsheet is intended to help interested stakeholders (including from clinical and social service providers, measure developers, informaticists, and researchers) more easily identify existing codes related to social risk and resilience, and to inform more comprehensive efforts to develop social risk factor measure sets.

The spreadsheet includes codes for 20 SDH domains from 6 commonly used social screening tools, including from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation’s Accountable Health Communities demonstration program, PRAPARE, HealthLeads, SEEK, WE CARE, and the National Academy of Medicine’s Recommended Social and Behavioral Domains and Measures. The document includes codes related to screening for social risk factors, assessing social needs, and intervening to address those needs (through referrals, etc.). Note that while we made every effort to find all the codes related to the 20 SDH domains, it is possible we missed some and this list may not be exhaustive. More details about the identification of these codes can be found in: Arons A, DeSilvey S, Fichtenberg C, Gottlieb L. Documenting social determinants of health-related clinical activities using standardized medical vocabularies. JAMIA Open. 2018;2(1):81-88.

Codes are grouped based on the related clinical activity:

• If you are looking for codes related to documenting the screening process, including all codes related to a particular screening tool, look at Table 1. You can examine codes by domain and subdomain, or by screening tool.

• If you are looking for codes related to documenting assessment and diagnosis, look at Table 2. You can examine codes by domain and subdomain.

• If you are looking for codes documenting treatment and intervention, look at Table 3. As with Table 2, you can examine codes by domain and subdomain.

• If you want to see screening, assessment, and treatment codes side-by-side for one or all domains, look at Table 4. You can find codes by domain and subdomain.

Further documentation and instructions are included in the last tab of the spreadsheet. This version was last updated March 31, 2018.

Please send any questions, comments, or suggested changes to siren@ucsf.edu.

Download the Excel File.