TransUnion and Socially Determined Partner to Improve Health Outcomes By Using SDOH Data & Analytics
Partnership will help healthcare stakeholders visualize social risk and create better outcomes for communities and organizations
With over 80% of an individual’s health outcome driven by economic and social conditions1, TransUnion Healthcare (NYSE:TRU) announced today an investment in and commercial partnership with Socially Determined, the social risk analytics company. Together, the two companies will focus on leveraging Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) and clinical and claims data to provide healthcare stakeholders with social risk intelligence about the individuals and communities they serve. In turn, organizations can improve the health and well-being of people at scale.
SDOH are the economic and social conditions that impact health, such as housing instability and homelessness, food insecurity, lack of transportation, low education, interpersonal violence, social isolation, unemployment and financial stress.
The partnership strengthens the power of Socially Determined’s SocialScape® platform by bringing it together with TransUnion Healthcare’s data assets and information on individual identities. This combination helps create a more complete view of social risk factors and their impact at the community and individual level. Through advanced analytics that quantify social risk and impact, SocialScape helps identify opportunities for organizations to match high-value, targeted interventions for their populations, leading to enhanced prevention, treatment and adherence strategies at a lower cost for all.
“Effective use of SDOH by healthcare stakeholders is one of the keys to improving a person’s wellness and lowering costs which is especially critical in light of amplified, existing disparities due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said James Bohnsack, senior vice president & chief strategy officer of TransUnion Healthcare. “TransUnion’s comprehensive data assets, accurate insights and industry expertise help healthcare payers better predict member and population risk. This partnership demonstrates how information can be used in powerful and positive ways to help the healthcare ecosystem better understand and make good decisions about communities and individuals.”
By combining and analyzing vast amounts of social and clinical data through a scalable, cloud-based platform, SocialScape® quantifies and visualizes socioeconomic insecurities and impacts. It provides powerful risk metrics that enable organizations to understand the many facets of social risk and — more importantly — how those social risks impact their business and the communities they serve.
Through the use of social risk intelligence combined with clinical data (healthcare claims and/or medical records), TransUnion Healthcare and Socially Determined will help health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and health systems as well as other stakeholders align resources to improve the health and wellness of populations with the greatest need by helping remove barriers to care.
The partnership comes at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the health, economic and financial challenges impacting patient populations and healthcare organizations, particularly for people of color and those with higher social risk. In addition, TransUnion’s most recent Financial Hardship Study underscores the financial effects of the pandemic, finding over half of consumers surveyed (57%) have been impacted financially by COVID-19, with a higher percentage of these respondents identifying as people of color.
“There is a great need for SDOH insights in the market, but most organizations are not in a position to leverage the data properly,” said Trenor Williams, MD, CEO and co-founder of Socially Determined. “While the impact that SDOH has on outcomes is well understood, organizations in the healthcare industry are simply not equipped to analyze social risk data alongside health records or claims data. This requires an entirely new skillset that our company was built to address. With the knowledge and depth of data assets that TransUnion brings to the table, our ability to provide clear and actionable intelligence is now much stronger.”
For additional information on how SDOH data can meaningfully inform and allow for more effective problem-solving strategies, the two companies presented a webinar on December 10, 2020. Healthcare leaders interested in learning more can access a recording of the webinar here.
1 https://nam.edu/social-determinants-of-health-101-for-health-care-five-plus-five/