Better Patient Experience Needed for Trust in SDOH Data Sharing
Original Article by ehrintelligence.com
Posted on October 31st, 2023 by Sara Heath
Patient experience factors, like care quality and healthcare discrimination, make it harder for patients to trust SDOH data sharing, ONC said.
– Healthcare professionals need to determine what it’ll take for patients to trust the exchange of their social determinants of health (SDOH) data, including looking into improving patient experiences and clearing up privacy and security concerns, according to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).
In a recent Health IT Buzz blog post, agency officials Catherine Strawley and Chelsea Richwine examined data indicating that patients aren’t always receptive to SDOH data sharing.
This comes as healthcare organizations continue to set up SDOH screening strategies. Using either paper-based or digital surveying, patients report to organizations the social factors impacting them and their well-being.
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One of the main sticking points for patients with the notion of providers whom they do not know having information about their social needs, Strawley and Richwine wrote.
“They also expressed concerns that this information related to care has been historically stigmatized and could fuel stigma-driven discrimination,” the pair added. “Some participants also indicated a lack of trust that their needs could be adequately addressed by their providers because they felt that addressing these needs did not fall within their providers’ scope of work.”
Patient discomfort with SDOH data sharing often depended on previous patient experiences, Strawley and Richwine pointed out.
“Our findings suggest that patient experiences with the healthcare system may influence individuals’ comfort with social needs data sharing between providers for their treatment purposes,” they wrote in the blog post. “This has important implications for providers’ ability to address social needs through a patient-centered approach, as sharing information with other providers or social services organizations is often required to connect patients to the resources or services they need.”
Generally, having better care quality, more trust in the healthcare system, and having no experiences of healthcare discrimination led patients to trust SDOH data sharing. Conversely, patients who experienced poor outcomes, who had little trust in the healthcare system, and who experienced healthcare discrimination were less likely to trust SDOH data sharing.
Source: Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT
In particular, experiencing poor healthcare quality and healthcare discrimination significantly decreased patient trust in SDOH data sharing, the data showed.
“As discussions around patient consent continue among academics and policy-making organizations, there may be opportunities for health systems and providers to address patient discomfort with data sharing by addressing well-documented, underlying issues in health care (i.e., poor quality of care, trust in providers or the healthcare system, discrimination) that may contribute to individuals’ discomfort with information sharing,” Strawley and Richwine recommended.
Moreover, it may be fruitful to examine the privacy and security provisions that protect SDOH data. This includes disclosing to patients how providers and social services will use SDOH data that is shared with them, plus making sure there are actually resources in place to address the SDOH that an individual experiences.
