Carlos Pardo Martin
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Welcome to a new instance of our McKinsey on Healthcare podcast.
Today, I have the pleasure to speak with Errol Clare, the Senior Vice President of State Programs at Health First.
The topic of today's podcast will be health equity.
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated longstanding health and social inequities, and a broader social discourse on health equity is underway.
One of the organizations that has made such an activation is Health First.
Health First is New York's largest not-for-profit insurer and provides plans across Medicaid, Medicare Advantage, long-term care, qualified health plans, and individual and small group plans.
HealthFirst currently serves 1.7 million members across its products.
Errol Pierre is the Senior Vice President of State Programs at HealthFirst, and in that role oversees HealthFirst Medicaid and commercial products.
Errol, thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us today.
New York is arguably one of the most diverse cities in the world.
with Health First members collectively speaking 70 different languages.
How do you see that diversity creating challenges or opportunities in managing the health of the community?
How did that bespoke model to each of your communities work while you were at the height of the pandemic?
I think at the introduction you talked about an app that you deployed to be able to engage members during the time.
Can you talk a little bit about that and more broadly how you've engaged members throughout these difficult years?
What other things did you do during the pandemic or before to support and collaborate with community organizations?
How do you all think about ways of engaging members that might not be as digitally native or who might not have access to a stable broadband?
You also talked about data and analytics to help inform which communities to pursue and understand what was going on on them.
Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Can you tell me a little bit more about how you are embedded within those communities to understand more of the ground level?