A Proposed Patient-Inclusive Methodology for Developing and Validating Telehealth Surveys that Include Social Determinants of Health

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses a method to develop and validate telehealth surveys that include social determinants of health domains. We performed a scoping review of literature on measuring social determinants of health and extracted 50 social determinants of health domains. We evaluated 14 validated telehealth surveys for questions associated with social determinants of health. We categorized the questions from the validated telehealth surveys using our extracted social determinants of health. We found that current validated telehealth-specific surveys only cover 16 (32%) of social determinants of health domains, with the most commonly evaluated domains being "Medical Needs" and "Social Connections/Isolation". Telehealth services are a valuable modality to provide care to patients. Surveying patients is integral to performing quality improvement and improving patient outcomes. Social determinants of health are important factors in determining patient outcomes. We propose an approach to validating the missing domains and evaluating survey validity.