Health equity: Activating meaningful change
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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.
How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact health equity?
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.
Absolutely.
What challenges and opportunities arise from community diversity?
And Carlos, thanks for having me.
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?
Yes, absolutely. I look at it all as opportunities, honestly, because it allows us to bring together a diverse group of people and we share best practices. And I think that's the key to diversity, our ability to leverage everyone who has a different lens looking at the same problem. and then coming up with ideas and strategies, and then being able to take the best practices from all the different ideas. An example is, we have patient populations that are Chinese, we have huge populations that are Haitian descent, we have patient populations that are Dominican descent, and all these different populations have different issues, different health disparities, and we work with those doctors on how to tackle them.
They all need different flavors of the same end goal,
How did Health First adapt its services during the pandemic?
through cultural competency. So if something worked with one population, sometimes we try it with another, but slightly change it based on the needs of that population. And we partner very closely with key stakeholders in those communities that say, I know the message you want to get across. This is the best way to do it. And so working through them, we have credibility with those populations to be able to move the needle.
How did that bespoke model to each of your communities work while you were at the height of the pandemic?
We're serving, again, some of the most vulnerable, ethnically diverse patients in New York City. We quickly, because of our population, saw the disproportionate impact on black and brown communities. And that's from the South Bronx to Elmhurst, Queens. We also saw survival rates that depended more on your zip code than how healthy you were.
What role do community partnerships play in health equity?
And from there, it enabled us to know where to focus. So there was a cross-functional team where everyone played their part. in terms of trying to figure out where to put our resources and where to sort of step in and try to help the members the most. Our MedEcon team was able to work closely with our chief information officer and our chief analytics officer to create a dashboard that provided us the needed transparency into where the COVID admits were happening the most. And with that visibility, we're able to know where to put our resources into play. And with that, that was such a critical piece for us to understand those nuances. Then we could partner with community physicians who were trusted in those communities to really put in interventions.
An example is we partnered with a physician group called Somos. They're one of the largest physician groups in New York State. And that's just one example of our ability to curate very culturally competent solutions for the members we served.
How does Health First utilize data to inform care management?
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?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:38
2
How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact health equity?
0:38–1:21
3
What challenges and opportunities arise from community diversity?
1:21–2:32
4
How did Health First adapt its services during the pandemic?
2:32–3:25
5
What role do community partnerships play in health equity?
3:25–4:36
6
How does Health First utilize data to inform care management?
4:36–5:54
7
What lessons were learned from the pandemic regarding health equity?
5:54–6:53
8
What future changes are necessary to improve health equity?
6:53–23:36
Speakers
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