Background. Incentivized by payment reform, healthcare institutions are increasingly shifting foc... more Background. Incentivized by payment reform, healthcare institutions are increasingly shifting focus and financial resources to addressing social determinants of health such as food security, housing availability, and economic opportunity. While there has been some assessment of these interventions either at the individual hospital level or with respect to national trends in hospital community benefit spending, the existing literature primarily focuses on health systems leveraging discretionary funding to implement one-off social determinant-related interventions (i.e. screening patients for food insecurity and then connecting them to the hospital food bank). The healthcare anchor model has emerged as a concept whereby health systems consider their roles as local economic actors that can leverage functional assets, such as hiring, purchasing, and investment dollars, to also address social determinants of health -- but in a potentially more structural way (i.e. shifting procurement pr...
Rather than simply scaling up, one nonprofit is "letting go" of its model and forming p... more Rather than simply scaling up, one nonprofit is "letting go" of its model and forming partnerships to change the US health care system.
The Baltimore City Health Department is tackling health disparities by taking a city-wide approac... more The Baltimore City Health Department is tackling health disparities by taking a city-wide approach to addressing patients’ social needs.
This chapter describes past and ongoing ecosystem redesign work underway in the City of Baltimore... more This chapter describes past and ongoing ecosystem redesign work underway in the City of Baltimore City, Maryland, USA. The work is about designing an “Accountable Health Community” (AHC) organizational model for Baltimore City and it involved the Baltimore City Health Department, a local public health agency; all Baltimore City health systems; several federally qualified health centers; and social service providers representing several domains of patients’ social needs. As a complex population health intervention, AHC planners had to grapple with the isolated and discrete programmatic as well as informatic workflows that exist at participating institutions. We sought and continue to seek to fundamentally change this dynamic, by developing a model that focuses on ideal interactions for Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries, and by convening systems players to map patient pathways and ensure patient needs are met. In that context, the ecosystem design challenge was to improve patient ca...
Pediatric guidelines emphasize the importance for healthcare providers to view children in the co... more Pediatric guidelines emphasize the importance for healthcare providers to view children in the context of family and community, and promote community resources at visits. In 2006, a Family Help Desk (FHD) was established in an urban academic-based clinic in Baltimore, MD to ...
Background. Incentivized by payment reform, healthcare institutions are increasingly shifting foc... more Background. Incentivized by payment reform, healthcare institutions are increasingly shifting focus and financial resources to addressing social determinants of health such as food security, housing availability, and economic opportunity. While there has been some assessment of these interventions either at the individual hospital level or with respect to national trends in hospital community benefit spending, the existing literature primarily focuses on health systems leveraging discretionary funding to implement one-off social determinant-related interventions (i.e. screening patients for food insecurity and then connecting them to the hospital food bank). The healthcare anchor model has emerged as a concept whereby health systems consider their roles as local economic actors that can leverage functional assets, such as hiring, purchasing, and investment dollars, to also address social determinants of health -- but in a potentially more structural way (i.e. shifting procurement pr...
Rather than simply scaling up, one nonprofit is "letting go" of its model and forming p... more Rather than simply scaling up, one nonprofit is "letting go" of its model and forming partnerships to change the US health care system.
The Baltimore City Health Department is tackling health disparities by taking a city-wide approac... more The Baltimore City Health Department is tackling health disparities by taking a city-wide approach to addressing patients’ social needs.
This chapter describes past and ongoing ecosystem redesign work underway in the City of Baltimore... more This chapter describes past and ongoing ecosystem redesign work underway in the City of Baltimore City, Maryland, USA. The work is about designing an “Accountable Health Community” (AHC) organizational model for Baltimore City and it involved the Baltimore City Health Department, a local public health agency; all Baltimore City health systems; several federally qualified health centers; and social service providers representing several domains of patients’ social needs. As a complex population health intervention, AHC planners had to grapple with the isolated and discrete programmatic as well as informatic workflows that exist at participating institutions. We sought and continue to seek to fundamentally change this dynamic, by developing a model that focuses on ideal interactions for Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries, and by convening systems players to map patient pathways and ensure patient needs are met. In that context, the ecosystem design challenge was to improve patient ca...
Pediatric guidelines emphasize the importance for healthcare providers to view children in the co... more Pediatric guidelines emphasize the importance for healthcare providers to view children in the context of family and community, and promote community resources at visits. In 2006, a Family Help Desk (FHD) was established in an urban academic-based clinic in Baltimore, MD to ...
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Papers by Sonia Sarkar