Conceptualizing performance measurement for social care interventions: An issue brief for state Medicaid agencies

Growing recognition that socioeconomic adversity impacts health outcomes has led the healthcare sector to support initiatives that address social determinants of health (SDOH). There is an opportunity to leverage performance measures to further incentivize these interventions and track adoption. Several social care use cases are relevant to Medicaid agencies: monitoring MCOs’ compliance with specific state or federal initiatives/requirements; advancing practice adoption by applying financial incentives, withholds, or public “scorecard” reporting; and informing future program development. This issue brief explores opportunities for state Medicaid agencies to implement performance measures with contracted entities that could strengthen their growing interest in social care and highlights several barriers to those applications.