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The Leading To Health column in the December 2022 issue of Health Affairs features a health system that empowers patients by giving them resources to address their health-related social needs.

Author Harris Meyer highlights work being done to support patients at Allina Health, a primary care clinic in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Allina’s Health Related Social Needs Program is a continuation of a program started under the auspices of the Accountable Health Communities Model, a five-year demonstration sponsored by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that ended this year.

Meyer explains that Allina plans to expand the program to all patients at its ten hospitals and eighty-plus primary care and urgent care clinics in Minnesota and Wisconsin by sometime next year.

Under the program, patients who report at least one health-related social need are eligible for referral and navigation to community services.

To improve this process, Allina is updating its electronic health record system to make sure that navigators and patients have rapid access to accurate information about effective community resources.

Preliminary financial analysis shows that the reduced hospital inpatient and emergency department use by patients who receive screening and navigation help through Allina’s program saves nearly $6,000 per patient per year.

Today, we are proud to announce a partnership agreement with Oxford University Press (OUP) to publish Health Affairs Scholar, a new open access journal of emerging and global health policy.

The journal will publish high-quality, peer-reviewed research from a wide, multidisciplinary community of scholars and policy leaders. In addition to covering core health policy topics of health care costs, access, quality, and equity, Health Affairs Scholar will highlight innovative translational research in health care technology, population health, and global health.

Today on Forefront, Rebecca Fisher and coauthors write that policy makers must choose whether to extend COVID-19-era telemedicine policies.

The authors suggest using the example of the UK, where audio-only telemedicine, which is more equitable, has dominated.

Isabella Rubin and Joshua Israel encourage payers to reduce the number of required quality measures (QMs) and to align chosen QMs across all contracts.

Joyce Bohl and coauthors discuss ongoing questions about the appropriateness of certain methods for calculating the cost-sharing reduction load.

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About Health Affairs

Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published monthly by Project HOPE, the journal is available in print and online. Late-breaking content is also found through healthaffairs.org, Health Affairs Today, and Health Affairs Sunday Update.

Project HOPE is a global health and humanitarian relief organization that places power in the hands of local health care workers to save lives across the globe. Project HOPE has published Health Affairs since 1981.

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