Addressing social and health needs in health care: Characterizing case managers' work to address patient-defined goals.

Objective: To test quantitative process measures characterizing the work of social needs case managers as they assisted patients with diverse health-related needs-spanning both medical and social domains.

Study Setting And Design: The study analyzed secondary data on 7076 patients working with 147 case managers from the CommunityConnect social needs case management program in Contra Costa County, California from 2018 to 2021. The service-designed to be holistic with a focus on social determinants as root causes of health issues-helped patients navigate social services, health care, and mental health care.