Charting new territory: The early lessons in integrating social determinant of health (SDOH) measures into practice

Quality measures for social determinants of health (SDOH) have been introduced or proposed in more than 20 federal programs, initiatives, or guidance documents to capture performance, but understanding the scope of work needed to effectively collect and align with these new measurement requirements is still in its early stages. The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) recently developed the Social Need Screening and Intervention (SNS-E) measure and is currently building 2 new domains of interest: utility insecurity and social connection. Before these domains can be leveraged to drive population health, the feasibility of collecting and reporting on them must be assessed. This report describes qualitative data collection on the barriers and facilitators of collecting data elements for utility insecurity and social connection from 8 diverse health plans. Although plans reported that collecting SDOH data was feasible, they identified barriers associated with multiple data systems, coding, as well as data formatting, storage, extraction, and mapping. Further research is needed to explore additional codes, mechanisms for collecting SDOH data in a patient-centric manner, and ensuring that health plans, health care systems, and community partners can align with national measurement initiatives. Standardizing these data will be key to improving outcomes for all.