Study provides new insight into low social determinants of health screening rates medicalxpress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from medicalxpress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
<p>A new study provides the latest data on the low rates for screening and documenting Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) in healthcare settings.</p>
<p>To better understand the challenges of tracking social factors, researchers from the <a href="https://www.cuanschutz.edu/">University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus</a> and Johns Hopkins published new research today in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/haschl/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/haschl/qxad074">Health Affairs Scholar</a> that analyzes the use of Z-codes by code type, setting and patient demographics between Medicaid and commercial insurance beneficiaries. Z-codes are codes used to document SDOH information for patients. The researchers found that less than two percent of both Medicaid and commercially insured patients received Z-codes in their records. However, they also found notable differences in the use of the codes between the programs and called attentio