Is Loneliness The Overlooked Social Determinant?

A couple weeks ago I found myself in a great conversation about the future of value-based payments—a future that my colleagues and I agreed would involve social determinants of health (SDH) in some shape or form (see Paying For Social Services ‘Value’ Requires Measuring Cost Impact). Our main takeaway from that talk was that the key to assigning risk of SDH and measurable value to social support services to address them is standardized models and methods—but that presupposes that everyone is on the same page about what constitutes a SDH.

Generally, when health care executives discuss SDH . . .