Principles for Orienting Payers, Providers Around Health Equity
Healthfirst shared seven principles that healthcare organizations can implement in order to offer healthcare through a lens of health equity.
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- What does it take to be a healthcare organization that actively orients itself around health equity and seeks to advance health equity solutions for its members and patients?
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In late 2021, Healthfirst, a non-profit payer in New York, put forward its answer to that question. Susan Beane, MD, executive medical director of partnerships for medical outcomes at Healthfirst, and her team at Healthfirst introduced the payer’s ADVANCE health equity principles in order to share best practices for pursuing health equity.
ADVANCE stands for Healthfirst’s seven principles of pursuing health equity. According to Healthfirst, equitable healthcare is: Available, Data-informed, Value-driven, Accessible, Nurturing, Community-based, and Evidence-based.
The concept of ADVANCE sprung out of a series of studies that the payer conducted over a prolonged period of time.
“What we learned is that, as a managed care company, we could have an imprint larger than just care management, paying claims, and signing members, etcetera,” Beane told Healthcare Strategies.
The company’s leadership emphasized that health equity needed to be at the heart of the payer’s operations.
“Putting the principles together was just a matter of finding the acronym because it was pretty obvious what we were trying to achieve,” Beane explained.
“ADVANCE is a really simple but comprehensive look at the pillars that we are not only attempting to implement, but also they're aspirational as well.”
With decades of experience in studying health equity, implementing equity-focused strategies, and assessing outcomes, the payer gained a lot of insight into what it takes to be an equity-oriented organization.
For example, Tom Wang, manager of research and evaluation in partnerships for medical outcomes at Healthfirst, explained the difference between data-driven and data-informed health equity efforts.
“In a space like managed care and with the populations that we work with, there's a danger to relying overly much on data and models without fully understanding and taking into account the members that we're caring for at the end of the day,” Wang said.
Rashi Kumar, director of research and policy in partnerships for medical outcomes at Healthfirst, agreed with Wang and added that organizations have to consider two perspectives when seeking to orient themselves around health equity and reduce racial care disparities.
“What is so important is looking at both sides of the coin. It's helping the member, listening to the member, understanding what their needs are and what their barriers are and what their goals are. And on the other side of the coin is the provider and the health care delivery system, understanding all of the systemic issues that come with that, that impede equity such as racism, discrimination, etcetera,” Kumar emphasized.
“I think addressing both of those sides of the coin is really important.”
As the payer continues to implement the ADVANCE principles, it has committed to sharing its findings with the healthcare community so that the healthcare industry can progress toward consumer-centered health equity.
