Q
Where does health equity fit within the vision and strategy for your company?
Health Equity is at the center of everything we do. Our goal is to help healthcare leaders gain access to the latest innovative technologies that are now mission critical to achieve compliance, improve outcomes, and maximize sustainable growth. For example, with just one focused application— automating Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs) required by the IRS for non-profit hospitals—we can save the healthcare system $20 billion that can be redeployed for higher value initiatives.
Equity Quotient is dedicated to partnering with healthcare organizations to achieve a rare win-win-win by reducing costs, improving patient outcomes, and driving sustainable growth. Our SaaS technology platform has brought together a combination of rich data, advanced analytics, and inclusive AI to provide greater visibility into socioeconomic factors, disparities driving up costs, and investments that can improve outcomes. We believe some of the most important, impactful changes in healthcare can happen in the back office with sexy solutions to not-sexy problems.
Q
What are the leadership traits that are most critical for C-level leaders to impact health equity in their patient populations?
First and foremost, Health Equity leaders need to have a deep commitment to the importance of addressing this challenge, not just for the impacted populations but for the health of our socioeconomic landscape more broadly. Despite spending more than twice any of the other 38 developed nations, the U.S. ranks at the bottom in terms of health outcomes , which is having widespread implications on all of us and will continue to compromise economic opportunity and quality of life in our communities if it remains unaddressed.
Despite spending more than twice any of the other 38 developed nations, the U.S. ranks at the bottom in terms of health outcomes [...].
Beyond this foundational commitment, there are a number of traits leaders need to navigate this challenging, important imperative, including:
1. Holistic Thinking & Strategic Vision: Health Equity leaders require a high tolerance for ambiguity and the ability to glean patterns and connections others don’t. More specifically, solving health equity imperatives require leaders who are able to “see the board” across functions inside the walls (e.g., Community Benefit, Population Health, Clinical Care Teams, Quality & Safety, HR, Finance, Revenue Cycle) and interrelationships across the broader ecosystem of organizations engaged in the care continuum (e.g., community-based organizations, public agencies). Having a clear vision that anchors and aligns the organization around the north star can help teams break through silos, humanizing historical “frenemies” to each other to foster better collaboration and enabling stakeholders to think and act differently.
2. Change Leadership: One thing I didn’t understand early in my career is that it’s never enough to be right! Said differently, I’ve always underestimated the importance of all the other things you must do as a leader to achieve meaningful, lasting change. Galvanizing people across organizations to accomplish new ways of working and ultimately improve outcomes and performance requires the ability to partner, persuade, and persevere. Moreover, the only way to achieve impactful, lasting change is through inclusive Influencing and trust building, which takes time and patience. One last thing I wish I’d known earlier in my career is that self-discipline and self-control are probably the most underrated and important qualities of good leaders as you navigate the challenges of effecting change. As my dad always said, “Nothing is as easy or as important as it seems.” Combining thick skin with a relentless commitment to empathy is the key to effectively navigating the ups and downs of the long journey to achieving impact.
3. Creativity & Innovation: Effective leaders in every organization I’ve seen have an extreme openness to change and are catalysts by being proactively creative, particularly around capitalizing on technology to reinvent ways of working that can reduce costs, improve workforce satisfaction, and yield better outcomes. They also democratize innovation by inviting everyone to participate. Additionally, they also provide incentives and opportunities for individuals and teams to show off and exchange new ideas, collaborate on projects, and partner across functions to scale initiatives. Creating positive peer pressure through targeting resources and recognizing acts of entrepreneurialism is one of the most important strategies that leaders can deploy to drive change needed to reduce costs, improve outcomes, and achieve sustainable growth.
Creating positive peer pressure through targeting resources and recognizing acts of entrepreneurialism is one of the most important strategies that leaders can deploy to drive change [...].
Q
What is the best example or an inspiring story of C-level leadership with a health equity lens?
Leading hospital systems are embracing health equity and being very intentional and programmatic about making it core to their operational DNA. As part of this evolution, they’re pursuing a myriad of thoughtful initiatives and investments across people, processes, and technologies.
A few organizations we’ve seen doing great work include Yale New Haven Hospital, AdventHealth, Common Spirit, Bon Secours Mercy, Bellin Gunderson, Highmark, Wellstar. In some cases, we’re seeing entire ecosystems come together in unprecedented ways, such as the District of Columbia where Dean Christopher King from the Georgetown School of Health is leading the way and Tulsa where the Health Department is coming together with St. Francis, Ascension St. Johns, and the George Kaiser Family Foundation. In all cases, each organization has stated health equity as a strategic imperative and established a health equity leader while also assembling cross-functional teams to bring together quality & safety, clinical care teams, population health, community benefit, HR, Finance, and Compliance. These cross-functional teams have been provided with clear objectives, a budget to empower the big job they’ve been given, and executive sponsorship from the C-suite to help them navigate the inevitable complexity and political challenges that they will face. They’ve also done a good job of balancing the need for standards while also realizing that each organization is unique and might require different flavors, timing of approaches.
Additionally, all of these leaders have put data at the center of everything they’re doing. Historically, healthcare teams have prioritized outcomes data for quality and safety, risk management, and other use cases, but surprisingly no one has evaluated the data through a demographic and socioeconomic lens. That’s where the magic is going to happen–unlocking new insights at a level where action can be taken and performance can be measured, tracked over time. By combining vision and leadership with tools and technology, particularly rich data, advanced analytics, and AI-powered automation, these organizations are improving alignment, collaboration, productivity, costs, and outcomes. They are also creating the ability to see where initiatives are driving better outcomes (or not) and sharing those best practices across the system or with other peer healthcare organizations across the United States.
Another interesting point to note is that most of the major hospital systems and payers across the U.S. have created an innovation team inside their organization and also formed a venture capital fund to catalyze and invest in new technologies and initiatives that can improve health equity.
Q
What's next for health equity and how can C-level leaders prepare?
Historically, the only health equity related mandate came from the IRS for non-profit hospitals to maintain tax-exempt status. That changed in Performance Year 2024 with new CMS mandates that now require hospital systems to rethink how they’re gathering and using data for Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs) and Community Health Improvement Plans (CHIPs). New CMS mandates include creating Health Equity Improvement Plans, incorporating health equity outcomes into CMS STAR Ratings, widening reimbursements to include more mental health and other services outside the hospital (e.g., transportation, doulas, childcare, housing), and evolving revenue cycle management to incorporate health equity factors into value based care contracts and reimbursements.
The increasing complexity of these mandates poses challenges for organizations. Key considerations include:
● Cross-functional Collaboration: Making Health Equity part of the operational DNA.
● Ecosystem Focus: Working with stakeholders outside the immediate hospital system, including public agencies and community based organizations.
● Technology Innovation: Embracing the need for rich data to understand the world inside the walls and throughout the surrounding community. It is also important to have a commitment to making that data consumable and actionable with advanced analytics and investing in user experience (UX) and visualizations that can bring insights to life for diverse stakeholders. While AI is in its infancy and comes with risks and benefits, the opportunity to automate storytelling around data and translate into a variety of languages and reading levels is also very exciting.
Investing in technology to automate compliance-related tasks can yield immediate benefits, freeing up resources, generating insights, and fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation. Healthcare professionals pursued their careers to take care of patients versus being mired in administrivia. Providing health equity teams with what they need to do the right thing can help them align to drive change and create a culture of collaboration and innovation.