Social Drivers of Health in the Electronic Health Record

There is currently much interest in screening patients for social drivers of health (SDOHs) to address health-related social needs (HRSNs), prompting clinicians to increasingly document HRSNs in the electronic health record (EHR). SDOH data in the EHR create many opportunities to address patients’ needs, tailor medical care to account for social circumstances, exchange these data across organizations, and enhance population health improvement efforts. This review synthesizes current efforts to document SDOH data in structured and unstructured methods, to make use of community-level SDOH data, and to develop national standards driving EHR SDOH documentation and exchange. We describe barriers faced by organizations related to data collection burden, patient privacy, data quality, and health equity, and we discuss future research priorities to make the collection and use of EHR SDOH data more accurate, actionable, and equitable.