Health equity: helping all employees on their unique health care journey
As companies rethink and reshape the support they provide their employees and their families, benefits advisors, HR professionals and other benefits decision-makers must continue to prioritize and invest in promoting equitable health care access and outcomes for all.
Building a diverse, inclusive and healthy workforce
Even when U.S. healthcare spending was less than a third of what it is today, the human and financial toll of patients falling through the cracks due to lack of access, poor care coordination, and a systemwide inability to grapple with the complex upstream factors that drive health outcomes was still prevalent.
What should be clearer today for self-insured employers and their advisors is that understanding how their employees’ identities, values and socioeconomic conditions intersect with and drive health care needs makes a difference. It’s never been more important to meet people where they are in their health care journey and help guide them with personalized navigation support and services.
Not only is it the right thing to do, but our research shows that investing in empathetic, personalized navigation pays off for both employees and employers through member satisfaction, employee retention and lower total cost of care.
Putting health equity into practice
What does it take for employers to actively promote equitable health care access and outcomes for all their employees/?
For starters, health care navigation can support everyone by respecting and recognizing the diversity of identities, values, geography and socioeconomic conditions that affect health needs and preferences. This includes guiding people to resources that help address racial disparities in access and outcomes; supporting women’s reproductive health; eliminating barriers to care due to language or disabilities; improving rural health care access; and supporting LGBTQ+ members through unique, and sometimes challenging, health journeys.
For LGBTQ+ employees, for example, healthcare navigation solutions can integrate data, technology and AI capabilities to help identify and guide them to experienced providers who declare themselves LGBTQ+ supportive. This enables employee members to better understand and access the tailored care they need. Such care can include gender transition surgeries, hormone therapies, and even assistance with confirmation of coverage and the legal changes and paperwork that can be highly complex.
A person’s ZIP code, income, language and health literacy barriers, and other social determinants of health (SDOH) can severely influence and undermine their ability to live a healthy life. For many employees facing access barriers, something as simple as the ability to geographically search and access a primary care physician based on the type of provider, location and distance can make a significant difference in their health and the health of their families.
And finally, an estimated 25 million Americans with limited English proficiency experience more difficulty accessing health information, following proper medication guidelines, and finding culturally competent providers and services. When a Spanish-speaking employee member needed help because her young daughter left her inpatient behavioral health facility against medical advice, we assigned a bilingual care coordinator who connected her with adolescent psychiatrists and a bilingual patient advocate and support group to provide personal support. Providing this level of tailored support and proactively integrating key point solutions not only lifted a massive burden off this member’s family, but saved their employer the much higher downstream costs associated with psychiatric relapse and readmission.
Supporting every employee on their health care journey
While DEI initiatives may not have the focus on corporate agendas they once did, continuing to invest in the principles and goals of health equity should continue to be important to employers – especially when it comes to employee health and wellbeing. Consider a recent McKinsey study finding that 65% of all full-time employees of large employers have experienced at least one unmet basic need, and 66% of LGBTQ+ employees experienced two or more unmet basic needs.
Meeting the unmet needs of every employee during their health journey should drive employers and their advisors to consider:
- Is your company concretely advancing health equity for employees and creating opportunities for everyone to live their healthiest life possible?
- Do you understand the unique health care barriers and concerns of your diverse and dispersed employee population? Do you have solutions to proactively identify and guide members to the right care and resources?
- Do you have the data and the partners to identify gaps in care and access barriers for member populations to downstream health care costs?
In business, too often we are asked to choose between doing good or doing well – even when achieving both is not just possible, but mutually reinforcing. When we commit to the humane principle that no one should navigate their health care alone, and we commit to providing proactive, personalized, preventive support, we create better employee health outcomes and directly mitigate the catastrophic costs bearing down on our health care system.
Zane Burke is CEO and a board member for Quantum Health, the leader in health care navigation and care coordination for workplace benefits.