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Health systems, hospitals, and community health clinics have a substantial part to play in patients’ lives. As trusted sources of healthcare and information, US providers may help patients understand the links between unmet basic needs—or social determinants of health (SDOH)—and health while supporting patients in meeting these needs (see sidebar, “Unmet basic needs and other common SDOH terminology”). While unmet basic needs disproportionately affect Medicaid-insured patients, more than 45 percent of consumers across coverage types experience at least one unmet basic need. Even patients with higher salaries may be struggling with unmet needs. Ninety percent of the United States’ $3.8 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures are for people with chronic and mental-health conditions, with 60 percent of adults across the United States facing one chronic disease and 40 percent facing two or more chronic diseases.1Unmet basic needs contribute to this by leading to clinical exacerbations, unnecessary and avoidable utilization, and poor outcomes. Individuals with unmet basic needs often have less access to healthcare and lower satisfaction with the care they do receive, compared with individuals whose basic needs have been met; they are also more than 2.5 times more likely to report poor physical health, more than five times more likely to report mental-health issues, and more than twice as likely to report higher healthcare utilization.2 Even employed individuals with one or more unmet basic needs were about 2.4 times more likely not to receive needed physical healthcare and to miss six or more days of work in the past 12 months.