Feasibility of Utilizing Text Messaging to Identify and Assist Patients with Hypertension with Health-Related Social Needs: Pilot Study (Preprint)

Abstract

Despite the growing investment in interventions to address patients’ health-related social needs, there is limited data on how to implement social needs screening in clinical settings to improve chronic disease management, such as hypertension. Text messaging could be an effective and efficient approach to screen patients, however, there is limited data on the feasibility of utilizing it.

We conducted a cross-sectional study of patients with hypertension to determine the feasibility of using text messaging to screen patients for social needs.

We randomly selected 200 patients (18 years) who were seen at their primary care clinic in the previous 3 months. The text message included 6 questions regarding food, housing, and transportations. Patients who screened positive and were interested received a subsequent message with information about local community resources. We assessed the proportion of patients who completed the questions. We also evaluated for differences in demographics between patients who completed the questions and those who did not.

Of the 200 patients, the majority were female (54.5%), Non-Hispanic White (57.0%), and received commercial insurance (52.5%). Seventeen (8.5%) completed the social needs questionnaire. We did not find a significant difference between patients who did and did not complete the questionnaire. Of the 17, five (29.4%) reported at least one unmet need, but only 2 chose to receive resource information.

We found that only 8.5% of patients completed a text-message based health-related social needs questionnaire. Text messaging may not be feasible as a single modality to screen patients for social needs.

Not applicable