VIDEO: Ascertaining patient’s social determinants takes some time

PHILADELPHIA – A physician should not feel that he or she has to expedite efforts to ferret out their entire patient panel’s social determinants of health in a short amount of time, according to a presenter at the American College of Physicians Internal Medicine Meeting.

“It can seem like a daunting issue, when there are so many different things that physicians see every day,” Hilary Daniel, a health policy associate with ACP, told Healio Primary Care Today. “But there are tools and strategies out there to look at social determinants of health and start to address them in their patient populations. They can start with one patient, it does not have to be a thousand patients,” she continued.

Daniel said it is far better for the patient and the clinician to proceed slowly so the social determinants can be properly identified and the clinician can refine his or her practice appropriately. – by Janel Miller

Disclosure: Daniel reports no relevant financial disclosures.