A report entitled “Addressing Health Equity: Practical Solutions to Address Variations in Care” was published on Oct. 4, according to a press release. The report was published by the Healthcare Leadership Council (HLC), a group of health industry leaders from various sectors, and ZS, a management consulting and technology firm. ZS conducted interviews with 35 HLC member companies, analyzed public and patient data, performed a literature review, and held a workshop with HLC members.
The press release states that “Among the health equity challenges highlighted in the report:
- There is a lack of standardization regarding data collection, data sharing and outcome measures that is confounding insights into health disparities and inhibiting collaboration across organizations and sectors.
- The healthcare system provides insufficient training and incentives for individuals and organizations to adopt behaviors that bolster health equity. For example, at an individual level, there is ambiguity on how to collect data from patients and, at a system level, there is minimal reimbursement to providers for nonclinical interventions.
- Certain populations and afflictions are insufficiently represented in clinical research and development and are, thus, less likely to benefit from research investments.
- There is a lack of sustainable funding for health equity endeavors, particularly for interventions developed with community-based organizations.
- Regulatory restrictions, such as Stark and anti-kickback laws, limit equity-focused partnerships due to the risk of uneven value transfer between organizations.”
In the report, the authors say that they have determined there are elements that require action from organizations across healthcare sectors to advance equity and quality of care. Some of the activities the authors recommend include aligning data collection standards, strengthening relationships to the community and CBOs [community-based organizations], and creating communication across sectors through information sharing and matchmaking platforms.
“Healthcare providers and health systems are the most involved players in patient and community health by virtue of being the frontline ambassador with patients,” the authors write. “The sectors span many different sites of care, ranging from hospitals, clinics and long-term care facilities, to testing laboratories. We note a distinction between providers with direct interactions with patients, versus those with only indirect access, such as testing labs. Our recommendations reflect these differences in the appropriate areas.”
They add that “In our analysis, the provider sector has a broad spectrum of maturity but was overall more advanced than other healthcare sectors. Providers spanning multiple sites of care tend to be more developed in their health equity efforts, as coordinated care across sites allows more touchpoints for appropriate interventions. Regional or multiregional providers, as opposed to national systems, are typically more advanced in health equity, which is likely due to reduced variations in population demographics, market environments and insurance relationships.”
The report continues by the authors suggesting providers lead efforts for data collection, interoperability, and outcome measurement across standards; work on expanding sites of care to improve the reach in populations that have a low level of use for traditional sites of care; and pave the way for scaling of interventions and partnerships with CBOs to combat health disparities.
HLC president Mary R. Grealy was quoted in the release saying that “We view this less as a report than we do an action plan. It’s widely known that we face a serious health equity challenge in the United States, but it can’t be successfully and sustainably addressed with a piecemeal approach or without fully understanding the barriers standing in the way of progress. Our member companies, who have already been investing time and resources to advance health equity, are committed to working with the findings and recommendations in this report to address the pervasive inequities in our healthcare system that have existed for far too long.”
