Table 2. Key Concepts, Representative Quotes, and Medicare Advantage Plans’ Characteristics for Theme 1.

Key Concepts	Representative Quote	Medicare Advantage Plan Organizationa	Organizational Characteristics
Enabling members to stay in the community and reduce health care costs	“We really try to keep people in the community as much as possible, and that means providing everything from transportation to home-delivered meals (obviously when it's appropriate), to durable medical equipment and things that will make it possible to keep people in their home....We feel pretty strongly that if we are able to maintain people in the community and address their social determinants that their health care costs go down. So it’s a pretty high priority.”	13	Regional, >4 stars, <50 000 members
Increased focus on SDOH	“[Social determinants of health] certainly [are] becoming much more of an area of focus for us. It’s certainly a bigger blip on our radar screen than it had been in the past. You can’t go to any type of event where health care improvement is being discussed in the state or a national event or whatever, or even some of our own internal meetings, and the phrase social determinants of health comes up.... Because it is clear that it plays a big role in people’s health.”	7	Regional, >4 stars, 50 000-100 000 members
	“This space is evolving quickly, and I think between the CHRONIC Care Act and changes that CMS is making and then just broader evolution in the health insurance sector in general with this big shift and focus of social determinants of health. I think there’s going to be a lot happening in this space. And there’s a lot of great potential here.”	2	National, 3-4 stars, >3 million members
Holistic approach exploring social isolation, housing, and caregiver supports	“We look at people in a holistic manner, and so there’s only so many things we can do through the benefit structure, so we can have transportation. We can have those discharged meals, but there’s other issues, such as social isolation and even caregiver support for seniors.... Now that CMS is kind of championing more flexibility, those are things that we’re able to explore further...things like social isolation, housing.... It’s not just about a PCP copayment or inpatient stay benefit. It’s more about the other things, the ancillary things that people have to deal with on a day-to-day basis that they can’t get help through their health plan, and we’re trying to find ways to help them in that respect.... So one example is we looked at the caregiver support last year, and myself and our community outreach manager, we went and met with an entrepreneur. She has sort of a phone support staff. What they do is they actually talk to caregivers. They try to coach caregivers. ‘Hey, make sure you take time for yourself. What you’re doing is very noble for your family member, but you got to make sure to take time for yourself. Take a walk, do yoga, those sorts of things.’ You’re seeing more and more of that across Medicare. It’s not just us. The Medicare Advantage plans are looking at those types of things.... If we were going to do new and exciting things, social services [or] social determinants [are] kind of where we can make a dent and an impact.”	10	Regional, >4 stars, 100 000-250 000 members
Addressing food insecurity and social isolation	“We have been interested in looking at new and innovative opportunities to address social determinants, but today, our primary focus has been around 2 social determinants, one being food insecurity, the other one being inadequate social support. So it presents through social isolation and/or loneliness. But we’re always interested in new opportunities to extend that impact, especially with points to improve the health of members.”	6	National, 3-4 stars, >3 million members
Services being considered: transportation, home-delivered meals, and housing	“The idea of providing transportation to office visits or the idea of alternate services that previously had not been reimbursed, such as home delivery of meals, even things like housing for patients—those are things that had previously not been considered medically necessary services, but we are taking a very serious look now at all of those things and more to try to find ways to address those particular issues.”	7	Regional, >4 stars, 50 000-100 000 members

Abbreviations: CHRONIC, Creating High-Quality Results and Outcomes Necessary to Improve Chronic; CMS, US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; PCP, primary care physician; SDOH, social determinants of health.

^aOrganizations are identified by number for anonymity.