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Assessing The Capacity Of Local Social Services Agencies To Respond To Referrals From Health Care Providers

Authors :
Tess Thompson
Balaji Golla
Matthew W. Kreuter
Irum Javed
Regina Greer
Rachel Garg
Charlene A. Caburnay
Amy McQueen
Source :
Health Affairs. 39:679-688
Publication Year :
2020
Publisher :
Health Affairs (Project Hope), 2020.

Abstract

Health care providers are increasingly screening low-income patients for social needs and making referrals to social services agencies to assist in resolving them. A major assumption of this approach is that local social services providers have the capacity and resources to help. To explore this assumption, we examined 711,613 requests related to fifty different social needs received from callers to 211 helplines in seven states during 2018. Our analyses focused on the proportion of requests for which referrals could not be made because of low capacity in the social services system. We examined the extent to which the capacity of this system varied by type of social need, ZIP code, and time of year, and we classified social needs in a new typology based on prevalence and system capacity. It is clear that health care's current screening and referral approach is appropriate for some social needs but not others.

Details

ISSN :
15445208 and 02782715
Volume :
39
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Health Affairs
Accession number :
edsair.doi...........b72f913e8dc96eae20555370bcd1c471
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2019.01256