Policymaking May Play A Bigger Role in Health Equity Post-COVID
Addressing health equity in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic will require a multi-pronged approach which will include regulatory movement and increased cultural competency.
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- Health equity was a key subject in healthcare prior to the coronavirus pandemic, but the events and the toll of 2020 took the conversation around improving health equity to a new level.
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Sara Heath, managing editor of Xtelligent Healthcare Media, told Healthcare Strategies that a conglomeration of factors have generated more discussion about achieving health equity in recent years. The coronavirus pandemic had a particularly devastating effect on minority communities and revealed the lack of health equity across the healthcare system.
Value-based care and social determinants of health were fueling the conversation before the pandemic.
“When we are measuring outcomes for our patient populations and getting paid for having good outcomes, it becomes very prudent that everyone is staying healthy and well,” Heath noted.
“So when we have whole pockets of people who are repeatedly seeing worse outcomes for different disease states, we need to figure out where that problem is or else our value-based care efforts are going to fail.”
Heath noted that regulatory changes may start to play a bigger role in driving forward health equity.
Up until recently, regulatory measures in favor of health equity had been lagging. However, that trend is starting to change.
“We are now seeing a bigger push for measuring health equity as a part of clinical quality,” Heath explained. “That's the baseline from which regulatory bodies are able to start making it a compliance issue.”
For examples of the latest regulatory efforts in advancing health equity, Heath pointed to the 2022 proposed physician fee schedule as well as the 2022 Medicare hospital outpatient prospective payment system, which was released the day before the podcast recording.
“CMS is really starting to think: what is workable for healthcare organizations to report on health equity? What is a feasible mechanism for it and how can we display this data and then empower the providers to use this data, to actually close those care gaps?” Heath shared.
However, the weight and effectiveness of these health equity policies remains to be seen.
For those interested in learning more about health equity, readers can start with the insights of Captain James Dickens, DNP, RN, FNP-BC, FAANP, a regional director for the American Association of Nurse Practitioners about the role of community-based care in pursuing health equity as well as the thoughts of Sheldon Fields, PhD, RN, CRNP, FNP-BC, AACRN, FAANP, FNAP, FAAN, 1st vice president at the National Black Nurses Association on the need for greater diversity in medical research.
