An Integrated Health Solutions Tool: Exploring the Intersection of Hospital Readmissions and Social Determinants of Health among People with Sickle Cell Disease

Executive Summary

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is the most common inherited blood disorder in the United States, affecting over 100,000 Americans at a yearly cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. SCD results in episodic periods of severe pain, leading to high use of health care resources. People with SCD (31.9%) had the highest 30-day all-cause readmission rate among other conditions with high readmission rates. The problem that we aim to tackle is the readmission rates for persons with SCD. We would like to test the idea that (1) the social determinants of health, which are conditions in which people live, learn, work and age, are associated with SCD readmissions among Medicare beneficiaries and (2) screening for these determinants would empower patients and their providers to mitigate the harmful factors which contribute to poor health outcomes and high health-care cost.

Team Members

Shondelle Wilson-Frederick (Team Lead), CMS / OMH
Chazeman Jackson, OS/ASPE

Milestones

August 2017: Project selected into the HHS Ignite Accelerator
September 2017: Time in Accelerator Began
December 2017: Time in Accelerator Ended