Delmar Boulevard, Geo-mapping, and the Social Determinants of Health

The social determinants of health are those factors that affect people�s health status that are the result of the social situation in which they find themselves. Thus, in the well-known graphic from Healthy People 2010 (dropped, for some reason, from Healthy People 2020), which I have reproduced several times, they complement the other determinants such as the biological (genetics), but are represented in most of the other areas. Physical environment and socioeconomic environment, certainly, but even �behaviors� are affected by the circumstances into which one is born and lives. So is biology, actually, as we learn more about genetic coding predisposing some people to addictive behaviors. Certainly it is not all volitional or evidence of weak character.

The social determinants of health can be partially enumerated, and include adequate housing (including sufficient heat in the winter), adequate food, education, and also a reasonable amount of nurturing

and support from your family. In short, they are �the rest of life�, outside and often ignored by the healthcare system. Camara Phyllis Jones, in her wonderful �cliff analogy� (which I have also reproduced before) creates a metaphor in which medical care services are provided for those who need them (or �fall into them�) along a cliff face, while the social determinants of health are represented by how far a person, or a group of people, lives from that cliff face. As such, it illustrates the degree of protection that we all have from falling off that cliff, more for some and less for others.[1]

One of the clearest ways to show the impact of these determinants is by a technique called �geo-mapping� in which certain characteristics (income, educational level, gang violence, drug use, number of grocery stores or liquor stores, public transportation routes, whatever you can think of) are laid over maps of a city, town, or region. We have seen these portrayed on TV or in the newspapers as national and state maps for political events (such as what areas voted for who), but they can also be very useful for understanding the different challenges faces by people living in different areas. The work of Steven Woolf and his colleagues at Virginia Commonwealth University has greatly contributed to this work; in addition to their incredibly useful County Health Calculator, has produced graphs that can be found on the Robert Wood Johnson Commission for a Healthier America site that show how life expectancy can vary dramatically in different neighborhoods, as in the map displayed of the Washington, DC area, mapped along Metro lines for greater effect, or the one of my area, Kansas City, Missouri (which doesn�t have a Metro!)

A recent contribution to this field has been made by Melody S. Goodman and Keon L. Gilbert, of Washington University in St. Louis, who mapped the dramatic differences across Delmar Boulevard in that city, in �Divided cities lead to differences in health�. Their graphic shows the disparities in education, income, and housing value, and, unsurprising, racial composition, on either side of Delmar. This work was covered in a BBC documentary. Dr. Goodman, speaking to a symposium from her alma mater, the Harvard School of Public Health, is quoted as saying �Your zip code is a better predictor of your health than your genetic code.�

This is a pretty sad commentary, given not only the incredible amount of money that has been spent on unraveling the genetic code but the amount of faith and expectation that we have been convinced to have in how this new genetic knowledge will facilitate our health. By knowing what we are at risk for, genetically, the argument goes, science can work on �cures� that target the specific genes. This is a topic for a different discussion, but in brief one problem is that the most common diseases we suffer from are not the result of a single gene abnormality. It is probable that, at least in the short-to-medium term, knowledge of our genetics will be more likely to lead to higher life insurance rates than cures of our diseases. The more profound issue, however, is that there is evidence from the social determinants of health, from the work of Woolf and Goodman and many others, that we do not address the causes of ill health even when we know what they are.

Why is this so? Why is there such great resistance to understanding, believing, that investment in housing, education, jobs, and opportunities will have a much greater impact on people�s health than more and more money spent on high-tech medical care (and, of course, profit for not only the providers, but the drug and device companies and middleman insurance companies)? It is in part because we hope (and, when we are more privileged, expect) that we will be the beneficiaries. And it is also because we choose to believe that those who do not have the benefits we have (of money, education, family) somehow �deserve� it because of character flaws.

The issue of �fault� is articulately addressed by Nicholas Kristof in a New York Times Op-Ed on August 10, 2014, �Is a hard life inherited?� Kristof argues that it is, not genetically but because the circumstances to which one is born and in which one grows up, the presence of caring parents who read to you rather than beat you, who take care of you instead of abusing drugs, as well as adequate food and housing make a tremendous difference in how you turn out.

Indeed, another major study by Johns Hopkins sociologist Karl Alexander, to be published in his �life�s work�, �The Long Shadow: Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and Transition to Adulthood�, and covered on NPR, confirms this. Alexander and his colleagues tracked nearly 800 children for more than 20 years, and found that those from less privileged backgrounds with lower incomes and less supportive families did worse. Only 33 of the children moved from the low income to the high income bracket. Problems with drugs and alcohol were moreprevalent among white males than other groups, but they did better financially anyway. Some people, rarely, overcome the deck being stacked against them, but most of those who do well after being born with relative privilege would likely not be among them had they been in the same situation.  Kristof writes:

ONE delusion common among America�s successful people is that they triumphed just because of hard work and intelligence. In fact, their big break came when they were conceived in middle-class American families who loved them, read them stories, and nurtured them with Little League sports, library cards and music lessons. They were programmed for success by the time they were zygotes. Yet many are oblivious of their own advantages, and of other people�s disadvantages. The result is a meanspiritedness in the political world or, at best, a lack of empathy toward those struggling�

That lack of empathy leads to a lack of action; we are willing to accept people living in conditions that we would never accept for our family and neighbors, not only across the globe but across town, or even across a street. From the point of view of health, our priorities and investments are misplaced when we do not address the social determinants of health as well as cures for disease. When we do not try to change the known factors of zip code that impact our health as we investigate those of the genetic code.

If there are to be �cures� that come from our understanding of genetics, there is every reason to expect that they will be one more thing that is available to the people on the south side of Delmar Boulevard in St. Louis long before they are to those on the north side of the street.

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[1] Jones CP, Jones CY, Perry GS, �Addressing the social determinants of children�s health: a cliff analogy�, Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 2009Nov;20(4):supplement pp 1-12. DOI: 10.1353/hpu.0.0228

Quality health outcomes depend upon the Social Determinants of Health

On the heels of the publication by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of how much money Medicare paid to individual physicians (discussed on this blog in Medicare payments to doctors: the big issue is the underpayment for primary care, April 9, 2014), we have revelations of inequity in Federal payments to health providers. A panel of the National Quality Forum (NQF), convened by the Administration to look at this issue, has determined  that payments for �quality of care� to hospitals under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tend to reward those hospitals caring for higher-income patients and penalize those who care for the poor (Robert Pear, �Health law�s pay policy is skewed, panel finds�, New York Times, April 27, 2014). This cannot be the way we want to go, and thankfully that is the conclusion reached by the panel. It is, however, the NQF that developed these 600 or so quality indicators, and has not recommended adjusting them for the socioeconomic status of the patients that a hospital cares for (although it does adjust for severity of illness).

What is happening is that the measures of quality of care are largely not measures of what is done for patients in the hospital, but how they do after � are they readmitted shortly after discharge, are the diseases for which they are being cared for under better control or not, do they get follow-up care. The fact is that for a variety of reasons including money, education, transportation, and competing demands, poor people do not do as well as better-off people, even controlling for the quality of care that they receive when they are hospitalized. A number of panel members comment on this in the Times article, including NQF president Christine Cassel, who says �Factors far outside the control of a doctor or hospital � patients� income, housing, education, even race � can significantly affect patient health, health care and providers� performance scores,� and panel member Steven H. Lipstein, CEO of BJC HealthCare in St. Louis who adds �The administration�s current policy on adjustments for socioeconomic status are quite inadvertently exacerbating disparities in access to medical care for poor people who live in isolated neighborhoods. I�m sure that�s not what President Obama intended with the Affordable Care Act.�

These comments are true, but the thrust of the NQF�s comments was the unfairness to the hospitals. This is important as far as it goes � it is outrageous to pay extra money for �quality of care� to hospitals that care for the privileged and penalize those that care for the underserved. Many of the members of the panel and other commenters quoted by Mr. Pear focus on academic teaching hospitals, which indeed care for a disproportionate share of poor people; however, public hospitals (in those areas where they exist) are even more affected. But what is more important is how this issue illustrates the power of what are called the �social determinants of health�, the situation that people live in before they access medical care, and after they are discharged, have on health outcomes.

Health advocate and policy expert Kip Sullivan is more pointed in his comments on Don McCanne�s �Quote of the Day� for April 28, 2014. �The notion that doctors and hospitals are screwing up and will behave if they are subjected to punishment and reward by third parties is not new. The Code of Hammurabi (1750 BC) subjected Mesopotamian doctors to a combination of reward (more shekels) and punishment (cutting off of doctors' hands)�But even Hammurabi didn�t recommend punishing the patients.�  If hospitals that care for poor people are effectively financially penalized for doing so, they will (at best) be further financially challenged in providing that care, and at worst will do their best to not care for the poor to the extent that they can.

Why would the NQF and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) take such a position, one that seems both unfair and even mean? One might be tempted to suggest that rewarding the �haves� and punishing the �have nots� is what is usually done by government policy, but we would hope that, given its rhetoric on health care � and the creation of the ACA in the first place � the Obama administration would not be guilty of such intent. We get some better idea from Kate Goodrich, the director of quality measurement programs at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who is quoted in Mr. Pear�s article as saying �We do not want to hold hospitals to different standards of care simply because they treat a large number of low-socioeconomic-status patients. Our position has always been not to risk-adjust for socioeconomic status within our measures because of concern about masking disparities, and potentially rewarding providers who provide a lower level of care for minorities or poor patients.�

Now, this sounds almost noble, like a values-based response to critics such as those on the NQF�s panel. However, the clear and obvious flaw in such logic is that hospitals have the power to change the lives of these patients in such a way as to decrease their risk for poor outcomes to be equal to, or better, than, those of higher socioeconomic status. They don�t, and to the extent that they could do more work in the community to help this situation, it would cost more money, so it is absurd that they be financially penalized. Dollars spent by government on health care should first and foremost be required to be spent on health, not on making money for providers (doctors or hospitals) who can by virtue of their location (and possibly other strategies) avoid taking care of the neediest. Hospitals should be judged and reimbursed on the quality of care that they deliver, equitably and without prejudice with regard to socioeconomic status, but cannot reasonably be judged on outcomes which depend on factors far outside the control of those hospitals.

The real issue is that people who are poor have a lot more to contend with than the services delivered as health care. It is not uncommon for our hospital to be treating a person with a bone infection made worse by their diabetes who needs 6 weeks of IV antibiotics. This can be delivered by a home health care agency, and most insurance will pay for it. But it becomes a problem if the person does not have insurance. And is even more complicated when they do not have a home. These people stay in the hospital, at exorbitant cost, for the whole duration of treatment. But would our quality measures be better if we only cared for those with homes and insurance? Would the hospital make more? Of course, as Mr. Sullivan points out, while the hospitals lose financially, ultimately it is the patients who suffer.

The social determinants of health are well-portrayed in the �cliff analogy� developed by Dr. Camara Jones and her colleagues,[1]and discussed in my blog of September 12, 2010, �Social Determinants, Personal Responsibility, and Health System Outcomes�. The care given by hospitals occurs at the bottom of the cliff, after people have fallen, but their risk, both before arriving at the hospital and in returning home, is that they are living so close to the cliff face; their housing is poor, their neighborhoods are dangerous and polluted, their schools do not educate, and food is often scarce and not nutritious.  In their study comparing health costs in the US and Europe, Elizabeth Bradley and colleagues discovered that while the US spends far more on �health care�, if you add in basic social service spending, the difference decreases, but that the US spends most of its combined health-and-social-service spending on medical care.[2](Discussed in a New York Timesop-ed, �To fix health care, help the poor� by Bradley and Lauren Taylor, and in my blog �To improve health the US must spend more on social services�, November 18, 2011.)

It is understandable that, given the political climate in Washington and state capitals and the flak that they took for ACA, the Obama administration does not want to put major effort into addressing the social determinants of health by developing programs to meet the core needs of poor people in our country, to prevent them from getting sick, to give them access to meaningful post-hospital care, to have health workers in communities, punish polluters, decrease crime, and limit health risks. Understandable, but not OK. And in the meantime, on this narrower issue, it obviously requires adjusting for socioeconomic risks for hospitals caring for the poor when their quality incentive payments are calculated.

But sometime soon we are going to have to address the core problems.

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[1] Jones CP, Jones CY, Perry GS, �Addressing the social determinants of children�s health: a cliff analogy�, Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 2009Nov;20(4):supplement pp 1-12. DOI: 10.1353/hpu.0.0228. Slides available on line at http://www.csg.org/knowledgecenter/docs/health/CamaraJones.pdf.

[2] Bradley EH, Elkins BR, Herrin J, Elbel B.,Health and social services expenditures: associations with health outcomes, BMJ Qual Saf. 2011 Oct;20(10):826-31. Epub 2011 Mar 29

Perception of problems in the health care system: will the mighty fall or is there a chance to save it for all of us?

[This is a particularly long post, but I haven't posted for some time. I have been working on a book, and if it ever comes together, this will be part of it.]

There are a lot of problems with our health care system in the US. Undoubtedly, there are problems with all health care systems, but ours has the distinction of being � by far � the most expensive in the world, and yielding health outcomes that are shocking low, especially for the cost. Our outcomes are much worse than those in comparable advanced capitalist democracies, and often follow behind other generally less wealthy countries. There are those who persist in saying �the US has the best healthcare in the world� but to the extent that they are not completely ignorant, or, worse, purposely dissembling for political reasons, they are talking about a narrow portion of health care. First of all, medical care. Second of all, medical care that is accessible, and therefore only for some individuals. Thirdly, mostly rescue care � high intensity, highly-specialized, high-tech, high-cost interventions for individuals with some conditions.

Even within these parameters, the claim is not entirely true. Many of the interventions that are available do not actually prolong life or the quality of life. They exist as goods which can be purchased by those with sufficient resources and sufficient motivation (presumably, ill health that is not responding to other treatment) but do not always (or even most of the time) create benefit that is �patient-important� � elimination of unnecessary death, or increased quality of life. For overall health care, even those with money, access, and insurance do not always get higher quality care; frequently, they have things done to them both diagnostically and therapeutically which they are led to believe may be of benefit to them, but often is not. In fact, these interventions can lead to further interventions, at greater cost in both dollars and discomfort or morbidity to the person, as abnormalities that turn out to be unimportant are chased down. Sometimes, these interventions, available mostly to the best off of us, are actually harmful. The costs are so high, we are seeing a new enterprise, �medical tourism�, in which Americans who need or want more-or-less elective surgery travel to other parts of the world, where the outcomes are as good and the cost is often (even with airfare and hotel!) less than the deductible would be in this country.

When we look at population health, rather than the individual health issues of people in the middle and upper class, the problems are even starker. By virtually every measure, health status in the US lags beyond other wealthy countries, and many less wealthy, in markers such as infant mortality, years of life lost to treatable conditions, disability adjusted life years, and even age of death. Our �between groups� contrasts are very stark in the US, mirroring those of many developing economies, not other �first world� countries. The fortunate among us may get the �best� care for some conditions at the expense (both financial and personal) of over-intervention, but many of us get what is frankly poor care or no care at all.

Finally, most of the negative determinants of health are outside of and before interaction with the medical care, or even any aspect of the health care, system. They are the social determinants of health, the economic status of your family (and of your family of origin; wealthy people born poor, while admirable �Horatio Alger� role models, have worse health status as a group than wealthy people born rich). They include housing, food, education, warmth, discrimination, environmental pollution (much worse in poor communities than in wealthier) and a host of other negative impacts that, in Dr. Camara Jones� analogy[1], put you closer to the cliff face, more likely to fall off and then be at the mercy of whatever the medical care system does or does not provide.

However, even when people acknowledge that these disparities, inequalities and inequities exist, and that our health system is sorely lacking, there is not agreement on what the most important problems actually are. Even when we eliminate overtly political posturing and consider only the honestly conceived beliefs of different players in the system, there is lack of consensus because there are many different perspectives from which to view the elephant of health care. In addition to the differences in perspective, there are differences in incentives, in the fact that what may be good for some part of the system is bad for others. Physicians and other individual providers, hospitals and health systems, politicians, policy makers and pundit � and of course patients � have different perspectives. And, certainly, there is plenty of blame to go around, and no shortage of others that any of us can point fingers at as the �real� problem.

For a physician who is interested in caring for patients, the regulatory burdens can be the real problem. Days are spent with less and less time providing care to patients, and more and more completing the record (and the evidence is that, whatever the benefits, electronic health records take more time to complete), filling out forms, complying with regulations. Increasingly employed by hospitals and health systems, they are driven to �be productive�, which in a fee-for-service system translates into �see more patients and spend less time with each�.  The number of people who need care is increasing, not just from the one-time bolus of people getting health coverage under ACA, but more from the increase and aging of the population. There are exceptions, systems where care is capitated, where physicians and other providers (especially those in primary care) are organized into teams and paid on the basis of providing comprehensive care for populations rather than for face-to-face encounters, but these are far from the norm. From the perspective of these providers, most of the efforts to increase access have increased their workload, decreased their job satisfaction, and, possibly most important, decreased their sense that they are providing quality health care to their patients.

For hospitals and health systems, which have built enormous physical plants and infrastructures based upon �product lines� that are highly reimbursed (and, more important, have a high return on investment, or high reimbursement-to-cost-of-providing-the-service ratio), the challenge is also regulation, but in a different way, and of changing what is reimbursed. Like physicians, hospitals would like the public to think that they are in the business of delivering quality health care, but the emphasis, whether for-profit or non-profit, is often on the business part. Hospitals and health systems are sometimes run by physicians or other health providers (often with MBA degrees) but are frequently run by accountants. They may do well by their metrics, making (or not losing) money, but this may be a result of providing a particular market segment, or product line, or service to a particular (insured) patient population, rather than providing the most-need healthcare to those who need it most. If policy changes begin to financially reward doing something different than the hospitals have been doing (for example, keeping people out of the hospital) they can restructure, acquire ambulatory practices, fight it and hope it will go away, or go bankrupt. They can adopt collaborative arrangements with their physicians, and sometimes restrict referrals to keep them within the system. Changes in policies and regulations are very challenging, because there is such an enormous capital investment.

Policy makers, politicians, and pundits have different challenges. Politicians want to be re-elected, and so need to satisfy voters, or at least likely voters, or at least those with the most money who will finance their campaigns. Pundits have few restrictions other than their beliefs. Policy makers, who may be politicians or work for them, or may have been or later become pundits, have to implement goals. But sometimes the goals are in conflict. To restrict the potentially inappropriate admission of patients by hospitals in order to collect more money from Medicare, puts policies and practices into place which encourage classifying patients as outpatients (�observation� status). But this then does not eliminate the cost; it both decreases the reimbursement of the hospital and increases the amount that the patient, the Medicare beneficiary, has to pay out of pocket.

Of course, there is the patient, who is ostensibly the focus of all the attention, for whom the entire health system exists, but who is usually the least powerful player in the entire equation. More important, there is not a patient, there are many people with different sets of needs and preferences. Yes, most would like to stay healthy if they are, or get healthy if they can. They may be willing to put a lot of work into it or may have a more passive approach, wanting to be made healthy. They may have very different understandings of health, and different degrees of belief in and trust in physicians or other providers, and indeed in science. Even if they want to trust science and medicine, they are very likely to be confused by the complex way in which new medical knowledge is developed and found to be accurate, scarcely in a linear �this is good for everyone, this is bad for everyone� manner. Their lives may be very busy and have little time to spend at the doctor, or they may see visits to the doctor as one of the more positive and fulfilling experiences that they have. They may �know� what is wrong and what is to be done, and find the doctor to be just a particularly uncooperative store clerk who will not provide them with it, even when the doctor believes that it would be of little or no use, unnecessary and expensive, or even dangerous. They may have the sense of invulnerability that often accompanies youth, or the frailty and fear of old age. They may have cultural beliefs that make it difficult or impossible to understand or accept medical recommendations, and lead to frustration in interactions with the medical system. Even positive developments, such as the �Patient-centered Medical Home� (PCMH), are challenged by the fact that not all patients are the same, and what makes one comfortable, at ease, and feel healed may be a negative for another.

In his sensitive and thoughtful essay on the Health Affairs blog, Matthew Anderson provides us with 9 questions that he has about the PCMH, in the form in which he finds himself working and in the projections for the future.[2]He is certainly not opposed to a conversion of practice to being more patient-centered and less provider-centered, but raises questions about the degree to which the processes that have been put in place in the name of PCMH have actually done this, and whether they have increased or decreased not just his satisfaction as a provider but the quality of care that is provided to patients. Dr. Anderson is neither a Luddite nor a malcontent, but rather is trying to raise his eyes above instrument panel at which he is working to see if the direction in which the ship is sailing is the one we want to go in. He is, above all, focused on the values that we are trying to achieve, and concerned that our over-emphasis on the process, on the plan we have put in place rather than the goal, will not get us where we want to go.

In his book �How the Mighty Fall�[3]business professor Jim Collins puts forward 5 stages of decline in once-great companies. Stage 1 is �Hubris born of success�, Stage 2 is �Undisciplined pursuit of more�, Stage 3 is �Denial of Risk and Peril, Stage 4 is �Grasping for Salvation�, and Stage 5 is �Capitulation to irrelevance or death�. Which stage is your organization in?

Luckily, Collins� work suggests that turnarounds can happen even in Stage 4. The key is staying true to the key principles and practices of our work. Dr. Anderson�s 9 questions can be a start to guiding us.

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[1]Jones CJ, et al., �Addressing the social determinants of children�s health: a cliff analogy�, J Health Care Poor Underserved. 2009;20(4 Suppl):1-12. doi: 10.1353/hpu.0.0228.

[2]Anderson, M, �Nine questions about my new medical home�, Health Affairs blog, March 17 , 2014. http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2014/03/17/nine-questions-about-my-new-medical-home/

[3]Collins J. How the might fall: and why some companies never give in.Collins Business Essentials. New York. 2009.