As Medicare continues to move toward making provider payments based on patient outcomes rather than services provided, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has issued a new report on the potential impact of socio-economic factors on those patient outcomes.

The report, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is based on a literature search and identifies five socio-economic risk factors that could affect Medicare patient outcomes and quality measures: socio-economic status; race, ethnicity, and cultural context; gender; social relationships; and residential and community context. HHS asked the Academies to look into this issue because of the growing perception that Medicare payment policies may be unfair to providers that care for especially large numbers of socio-economically disadvantaged Medicare patients.

NAUH has long been among the leaders in calling to policy-makers’ attention the special challenges posed by socio-economically disadvantaged patients and the potential unfairness of Medicare payment policies that fail to reflect challenges. Among other activities in support of this view, NAUH endorsed legislation last year to require Medicare to add a risk-adjustment component to its Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program.

The Academies report, Accounting for Social Risk Factors in Medicare Payment: Identifying Social Risk Factors (2016), is the first of an expected five Academies reports on the subject. The second report will identify best practices in serving socio-economically disadvantaged communities; the third will seek to identify factors that are and are not within providers’ control; the fourth will present recommendations; and the fifth, expected in 2019, will summarize the first four.

Find the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report Social Risk Factors in Medicare Payment: Identifying Social Risk Factors (2016) here, on the Academies’ web site.