New and troubling evidence of racial inequities in healthcare has emerged. What does this mean for the industry? I’m Jeff Lagasse with Healthcare Finance News, and we’ll do a little digging on that and other topics in this week’s Top Stories.
Racial and ethnic minorities who are enrolled in Medicaid experience notably worse care experiences than their white counterparts, a Health Affairs analysis has found. Healthcare Finance News reports (https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/medicaid-enrollees-minority-groups-experience-worse-care-white-counterparts) that Black, Hispanic, Asian American and other minority groups fare worse than whites on a number of metrics related to access, including access to needed care and access to a personal doctor. However, researchers found that Medicaid managed care plans are uniquely positioned to address racial and ethnic disparities in patient experience of care. Identifying and addressing these disparities first requires improvements in data collection, data quality and the use of data to inform quality improvement initiatives.
Amazon Care is expanding in-person services in more than 20 new cities this year, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Miami. As we see in MobiHealthNews (https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/amazon-care-expanding-person-services-year), Amazon Care was launched in 2019 as a service for its own workers, but Amazon announced last year it would offer it to other employees. The hybrid service allows patients to access urgent or primary care via telehealth; if it's available and necessary, a provider can travel to the patient's home for follow-up care. In-person care is already available in Seattle, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Austin, Los Angeles, Washington and Arlington, Virginia.
Finally this week, Epic representatives gave a sneak peek at the company's plans for the HIMSS22 Conference and Exhibition in Orlando this March – including the announcement of Cheers, a new customer relationship management system. Sam Seering, a member of the implementation services – CRM team at Epic, told HealthcareITNews (https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/epic-showcase-new-crm-system-and-more-himss22) that the Epic booth will show how healthcare organizations can use Cheers to help folks shopping or looking for care, complete an easy intake process and access direct care. The booth will also offer attendees the chance to review the latest reports from Epic research, which uses its Cosmos database to glean insights about patient populations.
I’m Jeff Lagasse with Healthcare Finance News, and this has been Top Stories.