Revising the Logic Model Behind Health Care’s Social Care Investments

Over the last decade, health care sector activities related to identifying and addressing patients’ social drivers of health have graduated from being innovative and leading-edge practices to being norms and expectations. Key examples include policies from health care payers and professional standard–setting organizations—including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the National Committee for Quality Assurance, and The Joint Commission—signaling that standardized social risk screening and, in some cases, navigation to social services, are now considered a basic standard of care.¹ The emergence of these and other state and federal health care standards, regulations, and quality measures related to social drivers of health² stems from strong and compelling evidence linking social adversity with poor health outcomes^3-8 and increasingly leverages the health care sector’s adoption of value-based payment models that reward quality over quantity of services.^9, 10

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