Creating new opportunities for patients in their day-to-day lives can help improve health outcomes, says Brian Pieninck, president and chief executive officer of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield of the Mid-Atlantic.

To address the "inextricable link" between economy, environment, community and people's health trajectories – social determinants of health or, Pieninck's preferred terminology, social drivers of health – the healthcare industry must address its structure. Aiming for progress and then course correcting are necessary to break barriers for those struggling to access the $4 trillion healthcare industry, he says.

For example, recent events like the Change Healthcare cyberattack and subsequent claims-payment-processing outage can are a sobering reminder that healthcare needs to be constantly vigilant about ensuring continuity in healthcare delivery – and that patients can count on that commitment.

The healthcare industry structure, "which has not always done a great job of meeting people where they are," has to be reconceived and thoughtfully adjusted, Pieninck told Healthcare IT News on this week's HIMSSCast. 

Pieninck – who is also the board chair of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association board of directors and chairman of the board for the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare – highlighted several tools and programs that are changing the SDOH paradigm by improving access and shared insights on the role of artificial intelligence in meeting healthcare's challenges.

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Talking points:

• How the Change Healthcare cyberattack strained healthcare.
• What it means to put "hands on the wheel" of social drivers.
• The role of artificial intelligence in solving some of healthcare’s biggest challenges.
• The people side of improving healthcare access.
• Why workforce development is something health plans support.

More about this episode:

No single technology is the perfect answer to pop health

Using tech to get to health equity-social determinants of health link

NorthShore uses NLP for SDOH

Health equity hindered by SDOH coding roadblocks

ONC creates SDOH toolkit for communities

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

The HIMSS AI in Healthcare Forum is scheduled to take place September 5-6 in Boston. Learn more and register.