Social determinants of health and medical coding: What to know
AMA May 13, 2022
Recognition of the impact that social determinants of health (SDOH) have on patients’ outcomes is growing, as is the desire to incorporate SDOH factors into patient-care plans. But awareness of an existing data infrastructure that could help physician practices do so is limited.
“The clinical care we provide only accounts for about 50% of the health factors that ultimately determine our health outcomes,” according to Margie Andreae, MD, Michigan Medicine’s chief medical officer of billing compliance. “The other 50% are determined by social determinants of health, making them just as important to address if we want to improve the health of our patients.”
Changes to the evaluation and management (E/M) outpatient and office-visit documentation and Current Procedural Terminology...