ACAP Shares Health Equity Goals for Safety Net Health Plans

Community health plans and safety net health plans have a crucial role to play in advancing health equity, according to a report from the Association for Community Affiliated Plans (ACAP).

ACAP’s approach to health equity is threefold. The organization has committed to weaving health equity into all of its future initiatives. Additionally, the organization will establish action items that will produce immediate impact alongside long-term goals. Finally, ACAP will partner with other stakeholders—such as consumer advocates, health plans, and researchers—to advance health equity.

With these goals in mind, the organization announced three themes that will characterize its strategy going forward.

First, ACAP committed to listening and learning. The organization will implement a 24-month learning series that will address how to incorporate health equity into payers’ strategies, data collection, community, provider, and member engagement, and change management.

“Each health plan will be provided with individualized support and action-oriented, practical technical assistance tools to drive progress on the implementation of activities and tactics to advance health equity for their members,” the report explained. 

“At the conclusion of the collaborative, plans will have conceptualized and operationalized a health equity strategic plan that will advance health equity for members based on local assets, context, and needs.”

This effort will also encompass a medical scholarship that will seek to create more diversity within the healthcare workforce.

Second, ACAP supported both internal and external efforts to improve demographic data collection.

Externally, ACAP urged CMS to release a report on states’ efforts to uncover and address care disparities in their Medicaid programs. The organization also recommended that Congress streamline access to funding that will empower health plans to comply with federal data collection standards.

Congress should make it mandatory for states to report on adult core measures that are not currently included in the Bipartisan Budget Act or the SUPPORT Act. These measures should require maternal health data and should be organized by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other demographic indicators.

Internally, ACAP dedicated itself to improving data collection by leveraging the ACAP Health Equity Learning Collaborative. Health plans that have a harder time collecting language, race, and ethnicity data can learn from health plans that have seen success in this area.

Lastly, ACAP will endorse policies that boost health equity. This includes policies that support funding for social determinants of health. Specifically, the organization highlighted the demand for more funding to address dually eligible individuals’ social determinants of health needs.

ACAP also supported mandating continuous eligibility for Medicaid and CHIP enrollees as a method for advancing health equity.

“Although ACAP recognizes that coverage alone will not eradicate disparities in health outcomes, it considers continuous eligibility to be an important tool toward achieving this goal,” the organization clarified.

Specifically, ACAP supported continuous eligibility during the postpartum period.

The organization emphasized that these three strategic themes were only the beginning of the process of endorsing health equity.

Other payers have taken a variety of actions to address health equity.

CVS Health expanded its free screening program in order to improve access to care for chronic disease management and prevention.

Blue Shield of California made an investment in a fellowship opportunity that aimed to diversify the clinical workforce.

And Blue Cross Blue Shield Association released a report that argued for national health equity data collection standards.