Issue Briefs | Oct 16, 2020

Developing a Social Risk Factor Screening Measure

Justine Zayhowski, Kate Reinhalter Bazinsky, and Michael Bailit, Bailit Health

State Medicaid agency interest in the impact of social determinants of health on the health status of Medicaid enrollees has surged in recent years. States have begun to stipulate performance requirements of their contracted managed care organizations and accountable care organizations to identify and mitigate social risk factors affecting individual members. To aid the identification process, some states have begun to recommend—and sometimes require—their contractors perform social risk factor screens.

This issue brief is designed as a resource for states looking to adopt a measure to assess social risk factor screening rates. It is the result of a series of convenings that the authors facilitated with three states—Massachusetts, Oregon, and Rhode Island—which helped them consider, discuss, and share perspectives related to the development of their own social risk factor screening process measures. The issue brief looks at the progress these states and North Carolina have made in developing their own social risk factor screening measures and highlights considerations for other states either planning to adopt an existing or develop a new screening measure.

As a companion to this issue brief, State Health and Value Strategies hosted a webinar series that profiled the findings from this issue brief, and another issue brief Social Risk Factor Screening in Medicaid Managed Care.


Expert Perspectives

March 28, 2023

State Dashboards to Monitor the Unwinding of the Medicaid Continuous Coverage Requirement

The unwinding of the Medicaid continuous coverage requirement represents the largest nationwide coverage transition since the Affordable Care Act, with significant health equity implications. Given the intense focus on coverage transitions during the unwinding, some states have initiated plans to publish a data dashboard to monitor progress. To date, five states—Iowa, Minnesota, Utah, Washington, and West Virginia—have publicly released some type of unwinding data (this includes states reporting unwinding data in both a dashboard and a static format, but not states with pre-existing enrollment dashboards that don’t specifically identify unwinding cohorts). SHADAC will update this expert perspective as additional dashboards go live.

March 22, 2023

Leveraging Data to Drive Results for Medicaid and Marketplace Enrollment

To maximize efforts to maintain coverage, state Medicaid agencies and Marketplaces can now leverage digital channels as part of their overall outreach and communications efforts. Rapidly evolving changes in consumer media consumption habits as well as shifts in digital channels, and the ability to leverage data sources, enables granular audience targeting and efficient use of resources. These can be incorporated into an overall integrated outreach and education campaign to maximize renewals and coverage retention.