Senior Director, Pharmacy Quality Care & Experience SCAN Health Plan
Learning Objectives:
Recognize racial health disparities seen in healthcare and the role that managed care organizations can play in reducing the inequities.
Describe various approaches, mechanisms and strategies managed care organizations can use to address racial health disparities.
Review outcomes seen in one organization’s efforts in reducing racial disparities in quality measures.
Session Description: It is widely known that racial disparities exist in the US healthcare system. Mortality rates among Black populations are 24% higher than among white populations and in 2020 alone, death rates were more than two- to four-times higher in Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native populations. The cost of these inequities in the US result in approximately $300 billion per year in excess medical spending and lost productivity.
This session will briefly review a Medicare health plan's prior success in reducing racial disparities in medication use (specifically for adherence to diabetes, hypertension and cholesterol medications), followed by expanding upon how these same efforts and interventions are applied to other quality measures like flu vaccination rates and blood sugar control in diabetics. The outcomes of our work will be shared and centered around our organization's journey towards not only reducing racial disparities, but eliminating them over the next several years.
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