There are early signs that promoting health equity is not just lip service, but a core priority for various healthcare organizations.
It’s a theme that panelists returned to their employers, providers or payers over and over again at this week’s virtual 40th JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, regardless of the conference theme.
In terms of action, the payer at the forefront of putting words into action appears to be the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.During Wednesday’s panel discussion on health equity, Dr. Sandhya Rao, the program’s chief medical officer, expanded September announcement The plan says it will incorporate equity measures into its contracts and payment plans with clinicians caring for Blue Cross members.
“For us, after the murder of George Floyd, seeing the injustice that became so apparent early in the Covid pandemic, we really said inward, “As a health program, What is our role in this issue? Rao said during the panel discussion.
These questions suggest that the plan has two levers it can pull: data and doctor payments. Rao describes the latter as one of the most influential things a payer does and can influence investment. These two levers then lead the payer to actively try to do the following:
- Gather racial data.
In fact, BCBS in Massachusetts has Share publicly The effort revealed some data points about race-based healthcare. These included Asian, Black, and Hispanic members who were less likely to be screened for colorectal cancer than non-Hispanic white members (67.0% for Asians, 63.8% for blacks, 65.4% for Hispanics, and 65.4% for non-Hispanic white members 70.8%). Black business members had more than twice the rate of serious maternal morbidity (life-threatening medical problems during childbirth) than white non-Hispanic members (2.8% vs 1.2%). While the racial data is of poor quality, BCBS has been asking its patient population to voluntarily disclose their ethnicity through the BCBS app for about a year. Providers are doing the same, so BCBS in Massachusetts has access to this information. - Integrate race-based outcomes with physician payment plans and value-based contracts “What’s very exciting to me as a practitioner is that we’re integrating these things — data and measurements — into our collaborations with providers in Massachusetts,” Rao said. To date, suppliers in the state, reimbursed by the Massachusetts BCBS, have had value-based contracts for over a decade, where they are paid and incentivized based on value rather than volume, based on the quality and efficiency measures the supplier achieves. Now that payers are increasing race-based incentives, providers will be able to receive financial incentives if they can demonstrate that they are closing the outcome gap experienced by people of color.
- Provide infrastructure support
Recognizing that suppliers are under tremendous pressure during Covid and in general, and that these goals cannot be achieved without some financial support, BCBS will provide a $25 million grant to Institute for Healthcare Improvement, The latter will be used for distribution to provider groups to support their work in reducing the disparities in outcomes experienced by people of color. “
Photo: Peter Pencil, Getty Images
