Dr Paul Alexander Discusses Strategies for Health Systems to Identify Disparities

Paul G. Alexander, MD, MPH, executive vice president and chief health equity and transformation officer at RWJBarnabas Health, discusses key strategies for health systems working to identify and address health disparities.

Transcript

For health systems just beginning in their journey toward identifying and addressing health disparities, what factors should be top of mind and what are some best practices for creating population health management strategies respective to the communities they serve?

A considerate amount of attention has to be paid to social determinants of health, with the understanding that one size does not fit all. When you're talking about patient populations, you're looking at diverse groups—diversity in ethnicity, diversity in individuals who are dealing with behavioral disorders. In order to be effective and assist these patients, we have to take into consideration the varieties that might occur that impact our ability to address health disparities.

We utilize a survey for our social determinants of health where we gather information on our patient populations. We look at indicators such as emergency department visits, we look at hospitalizations that are extended, we look at readmissions, and we try to stratify populations that we see as being most challenged and address their concerns and needs. Creating population health management strategies is definitely going to take a concerted effort and understanding the variety of populations that we serve, as well as understanding how as a health system we can integrate in the various communities to really engage to address the fears that I find some vulnerable populations have with respect to the health care system: they don't trust, they feel that they won't get the type of care they need.

By using case managers who can develop relationships with these individuals and really perform the outreach that's necessary to improve outcomes, I think that's a key factor. And I do want to stress, and it's really significant, that we're mindful of the populations in terms of one size not fitting all. You have to develop initiatives that make sense for specific populations. And ultimately, we can get everybody engaged regardless of faith, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of disabilities—and get them engaged in really working with us, the health system, to improve their care.