Today, the burden of addressing patients’ social needs disproportionately falls on primary care providers and often results in a “screen and refer” approach — which involves asking patients to quickly complete checklists about their social needs and then automatically refering them to social service organizations. This approach is expensive, inefficient, and misses patients with complex social needs who aren’t engaged in primary care.

In a new article for Health Affairs, our co-founders Rajaie Batniji and Sanjay Basu alongside Shantanu Agrawal and Sai Ma of Elevance Health propose an alternative value-based arrangement: a “social accountable care organization” (ACO) in Medicaid that addresses social needs by placing primarily non-clinical staff — including community health workers and social workers — at the center of care to maximize the impact on patient health and outcomes.

Read more: https://wymrk.co/45tDLHu