Clinicians can sometimes focus only on a patient’s medical needs, but listening to the patient’s own goals and priorities often reveals social drivers of health that must be addressed, said Renee Murray, associate clinical director of Care Management Initiatives at Camden Coalition.

Transcript (slightly modified)

How does the Camden Coalition take into account the unmet social needs of patients and address those as part of care?

So, working with this 1% most medically and socially complex population, the medical complexities and the social complexities go hand in hand. It’s a marriage. When we are addressing needs with our patient population, we are asking them: you identify your priorities and goals. What is it that you want to focus on?

And that’s a different shift in healthcare as well, because so often we’re saying, this is what we recommend as the clinician, as the “expert,” right. I’m the expert, you’re the patient. I have the knowledge, I’m going to just transfer my knowledge to you in saying, this is how you should be tackling X, Y, and Z.

And we’re saying, you tell us what your goals and priorities are. And a lot of the time those goals and priorities are very socially driven. So we are embracing those social goals and priorities, and that’s what is allowing us to address putting the focus on what the patient is asking for, and most times it is something that is a social driver. As traditional medicine we’re just focusing on the clinical aspect, [but] we are very driven by what the patient is telling us and it’s often social.