What HRSN means across payors
Health-Related Social Needs (HRSN) are individual needs related to factors such as housing, food, transportation, utilities, and interpersonal safety. These needs can affect people across all coverage and funding arrangements. Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) describes the broader conditions in which people live; HRSN focuses on the needs identified for an individual.
The screening-to-service workflow
An HRSN program typically moves through five stages: screening (structured HRSN assessment at a clinical or community touchpoint), eligibility and consent (confirming benefit coverage and member consent to share information), referral (routing the identified need to a capacity-aware community provider), service delivery and verification (confirming the service was actually provided, not just referred), and outcome attribution (linking the resolved need back to health and cost outcomes for program and contract reporting). A common failure point is the gap between step 3 and step 4 — referrals that are sent but never confirmed as completed, sometimes called referral leakage.
Why closed-loop tracking matters for compliance
Programs and contracts may require evidence that a referral resulted in a completed service. Closed-loop tracking connects referral creation, acceptance, service verification, and outcomes in an auditable record. Reporting requirements vary by payor, funder, and program.
How Relay Helps
Relay was built around the full HRSN lifecycle, not just referral creation: eligibility checks, capacity-aware routing to community organizations, closed-loop status tracking through acceptance, service delivery, and outcome capture, plus the financial operations (authorizations, encumbrances) and reporting dashboards network Lead Entities and managed care organizations need for regulatory and quality reporting.