Health Equity

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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has recognized that addressing health care disparities and achieving health equity should drive our nation’s top health priorities.[1] According to the CMS Framework for Health Equity 2022-2023, health equity is defined as, “the attainment of the highest level of health for all people, where everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their optimal health regardless of race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status, geography, preferred language, or other factors that affect access to care and health outcomes”. In order to eliminate health and health care disparities, there needs to be an effort to provide quality, equitable care to those in areas without access and availability to the services necessary to meet their health and social needs.Continue Reading Examining the Use of the Area Deprivation Index in Value-Based Care Models

In 2021, 1 in 10 American households experienced food insecurity, an issue exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.[1] Diet-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer are some of the leading causes of death and disability in the U.S. Each year in the U.S. there is an estimated $52.8 billion in excess health care costs as a result of adults experiencing food insecurity.[2] Since recognizing the influence of nonmedical factors such as socioeconomic status, education, and physical education on health, there have been a growing number of initiatives to address social determinants of health (SDOH) within the health care system. Food is medicine interventions are tailored to respond to the connection between food and health in order to help prevent, manage, or reverse diet-related disease.[3] Food is medicine interventions may include medically tailored meals, produce prescriptions, and medically tailored food packages. These interventions have been associated with decreased inpatient hospital admissions, decreased overall healthcare costs, increased medication adherence, and increased diet quality.[4] The concept of using healthy foods to reduce diet-related disease in the U.S. is increasing in popularity. There is bipartisan support for food is medicine initiatives to target food insecure and medically vulnerable populations.Continue Reading Food is Medicine: Can Policymakers Come to the Table?

Rapid developments and competition in artificial intelligence (AI) will drive proliferation of new AI technologies in health care in the coming years, along with a number of legal and ethical issues.

ChatGPT 3.5 created a huge splash, rife with controversy, when it was released in November 2022. Launched by the San Francisco-based startup OpenAI, ChatGPT is a natural language processing (NLP) model (a type of machine learning (ML)), that automatically learns and recognizes patterns. ChatGPT uses a neural network architecture to generate human-sounding responses to questions, providing users with large amounts of potentially useful information in seconds. According to a recent review, ChatGPT demonstrated that it was capable of passing all three parts of the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE), which tests medical students on topics including the basic sciences, clinical knowledge and patient treatment and diagnosis, without any specialized training. ChatGPT also showed proficiency in medical charting, diagnosing, and performing nonclinical tasks. OpenAI recently launched ChatGPT 4.0, which offers expanded capabilities and improved performance on various professional and academic assessments.Continue Reading AI in Health Care: AI Bill of Rights, Future Regulations, and What Business Should Consider Now

As we move into 2023, the impact of the pandemic on marginalized groups continue. The COVID 19-pandemic has exacerbated longstanding racial and ethnic disparities in health care. In terms of national healthcare spending, healthcare inequities make up about $230 billion in annual spending; and that amount could potentially reach $1 trillion by the year 2040 if inequities persist or worsen. In 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a new strategic vision to guide the Centers’ model testing and priorities toward a vision of achieving equitable outcomes through high-quality, affordable, person-centered care. But it is important to also highlight what other federal agencies, states, and health plans are doing to address health inequity especially as our healthcare system, as a whole, is moving towards value-based care initiatives.Continue Reading Health Sector Efforts to Address Health Equity and Affordability in 2023