Introduction: Adapting clinical care decisions for patient-reported social risks is essential to social health integration and patient-centered care. Most research in this area focuses on awareness and assistance (social-needs-targeted care), such as screening and referral to food, financial, and other resources. Limited evidence for adjustment strategies (social risk-informed care) or adapting care for social risks made it difficult for Kaiser Permanente to implement new initiatives. This article describes a co-design process to build a novel, adjustment-focused continuing medical education course.
Methods: The authors co-developed the online continuing medical education course with patients and clinicians using user-centered design. Transcripts from co-design activities were coded and analyzed by thematic analysis to identify major themes, including perceptions of social risk-informed care and barriers to care adjustment.
Results: Practical hurdles for implementing social risk-informed care emerged, including clinicians' concerns about the ethics of adjustment as substandard care, particularly without robust assistance activities. However, patients expressed a desire for their care to be adapted to their social circumstances, to allow for more realistic care plans.
Discussion: Implementation barriers identified from the co-design were addressed through an interactive, case-study approach. Existing evidence on contextualized care and shared decision making informed a general framework for primary care providers to engage in awareness and adjustment activities, paired with 3 interactive case studies based on real-world, clinician-supplied scenarios.
Conclusion: The authors recommend that multiple stakeholder perspectives be incorporated during the development of social health integration initiatives, particularly adjustment. Education complemented by active, nuanced, flexible implementation strategies may be necessary for the successful uptake of care-delivery-based social health integration activities.
Keywords: quality of health care; social determinants of health; social health; social needs; social risks; standard of care; training.