Addressing All the Factors That Drive Health
Our efforts make the greatest impact when coordinated and combined — especially for people at higher risk for complex conditions.
Leveraging vast data and proprietary digital platforms, we’re working to make healthcare more proactive, predictive, and personalized for the 115 million people we serve. Active partnership makes it happen. We collaborate with care providers and community organizations to provide an array of services to address all the factors that contribute to health.
Measuring Whole Health
About 80% of what drives health happens outside the doctor's office. Medical care is a much smaller share. Therefore, healthcare stakeholders must reach patients outside of the doctor's office to address all the factors that influence health — physical, behavioral, and social.
Quantifying whole health is equally important, because it allows us to measure our progress.
That’s why Elevance Health developed the Whole Health Index (WHI), a first-of-its-kind individual health assessment. Using a scale of 0 to 100, it can evaluate a person's or group’s health and assess the physical and social drivers that influence it.
Total WHI combines the social drivers and physical drivers equally together (50% each) into one data point.
Connecting the Dots to Integrate Care
Watch these videos to see how using a whole-health approach can improve health.
Prioritizing Social Needs
The Community Connected Care program helps members access evidence-based care, in part by addressing their social needs and removing treatment barriers.
Program staff connect the people we serve to resources through the SydneySM Health platform, by phone or in person. It also provides support through collaborations with community-based organizations, such as food banks, area agencies on aging, and other nonprofits.
Addressing Loneliness
Loneliness can pose serious health risks for those experiencing it. Our Member Connect program identifies Medicare members who might be socially isolated, whether they’re newly widowed or living with serious illnesses.
They are then matched with a social care partner who helps connect them to resources to reduce loneliness and address other social barriers affecting their overall health.
Personalizing Healthcare
By combining the right data, the right technology, and the right care, person-centered programs and services can help improve whole health.
This proactive, integrated approach is especially impactful for people with complex health conditions, like Erinn Walz, a member of one of our Colorado health plan affiliates.
Clinicians, payers and industry partners can work wonders when we share a patient-centered mindset. As part of Carelon, CareBridge is expanding what we can accomplish by expanding access to virtual healthcare. Many patients are happier and healthier when they can be treated in their home, and the benefits of virtual care for our home and community-based patients extend across the healthcare system – all thanks to the willingness to put patients first.
CareBridge, Tennessee
Building a Healthier Future Together
It takes a village to improve health at a population level. As healthcare stakeholders, our efforts make the biggest impact when combined, especially for people at a higher risk for complex conditions.
A holistic approach delivers on that impact, one person at a time. For example, take one 62-year-old member of our affiliated health plan in Louisiana, who had congestive heart failure, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), major depression, end-stage renal disease, and ongoing pain.
We worked with him to address his needs using proactive outreach, health-related social needs assessments, and collaboration with food pantries, the local Lions Club, and other organizations. As a result, he went from having 41 ER and inpatient admissions to zero avoidable admissions in the three months following our interventions.
Those results highlight the difference healthcare stakeholders can make when they work collaboratively. Together, we can improve the health and well-being of millions of Americans.
Supporting Care Providers
Discover how being active partners that go beyond the contract can have a real impact on health. By working closely together with our care provider partners, we can make a meaningful difference.
Contracting for Outcomes
Value-based care arrangements aim to enhance preventive care, reward quality outcomes, promote evidence-based practices, and improve patient experiences within the care system.
Collaborating for Success
Supporting care providers with tools, resources, and data enables timely, informed decisions to help improve the health of the people in our communities.
Connecting for Health
The right tools and solutions can connect the dots between care providers, health plans, employer groups, and consumers to deliver whole health more affordably.
Download the Executive Summary of This Report
Related Stories
Elevance Health Impact
A New Way to Measure Health May Be Just What’s Needed to Improve ItMeasuring health usually means blood tests or height and weight measures. But there are other factors, like having a safe place to call home and nutritious food, that have just as much to do with health. How should these be measured?
A Whole Health Story
What are the Components of Whole Health?Good health begins where you live, work, learn, and play. A whole-health approach looks beyond the walls of the doctor’s office to encompass all the behavioral, physical, and social drivers that influence individual and community health. Medical care accounts for just 10 to 20% of our health.
A Whole Health Story
Z-Codes Capture Health-Related Social NeedsCare providers use certain codes to document a patient’s physical symptoms, diagnoses, and services received. Known as “ICD-10” codes, they are listed in individuals’ electronic health records (EHRs) and on claims submitted to health plans. The ICD-10 Z-codes are a subset of those codes that document health-related social needs (HRSN), such as unemployment or housing instability.