Inequities in care delivery and patient outcomes is a moral issue. It can also impact the functioning and outcomes of hospitals and health systems. Health disparities among a provider’s patient population can lead to legal risks, accreditation failures, lower quality and HCAHPS scores, avoidable utilization, and increased total cost of care. Further, these inequities can damage consumer confidence and the organization’s brand.
Health disparities typically result from two factors: inequitable care delivery and the impact of unmet social needs. Maintaining a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture is a key first step to improving equitable care delivery, but it’s not enough. All staff need to be able to care for all patients regardless of background, and all are at risk of relying on cognitive shortcuts in high stress situations. And even if staff are able to build trusting, patient-centered relationships, they can’t make much clinical headway if patients face non-clinical barriers to health, which can account for up to 50% of health outcomes.
How Advisory Board can help
The first step to offering equitable care to all patients is to engender organization-wide cultural humility. Culturally-responsive care builds trust with marginalized patients and enables care teams to meet the range of diverse and intersectional needs. Cultural humility requires an in-depth understanding of structural inequities and how they manifest in the patient/provider relationships:
In addition, staff must also have patient engagement basics down pat:
Once staff can build strong patient relationships and design person-centered care plans, they also must be prepared to meet the range of needs they surface. Often, non-clinical needs interfere with clinical improvement and most impact patients from historically marginalized communities. To get started, make sure you understand the basics:
Then, develop a plan of action for meeting these needs. Provider organizations select high quality community partners and create seamless referral processes. To do so, design investments with sustainability in mind and ensure you have comprehensive data on the range of patient needs to prioritize next steps:
Then, design targeted interventions to address the most pressing social needs among your patients:
- Food security services
- Supportive housing programs
- Community health worker care
- Mobile health clinics
- Congregational health networks
- Digital equity