Payer Funds Local Practices to Help Address Racial Care Disparities

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (Blue Cross) is providing $25 million to local healthcare organizations to help reduce racial care disparities.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) will distribute the funding to practices and hospitals through grants. The funds will help recipients improve their equity efforts and offer financial incentives for addressing inequities in new contracts starting in 2023.

“We know these changes can’t be made overnight. Addressing deep-rooted inequities requires significant time, energy, and staff resources,” Andrew Dreyfus, president and chief executive officer of Blue Cross, stated in the press release.

“We recognize that and want to support our clinical partners in this important work, since we all stand to benefit from a more equitable healthcare system.”

According to the press release, physician practices and hospitals can use the funding for various health equity practices, including improving their patient race and ethnicity data collection and increasing the number of focused interventions to improve clinical conditions.

"We want to help clinicians determine the best ways to improve the equity of care their patients receive and then act to make improvements," Mark Friedberg, MD, senior vice president for performance measurement and improvement at Blue Cross, said in the press release.

Some organizations may choose to make targeted investments such as upgrading language capabilities or implementing programs that zero in on specific conditions to improve health equity, Friedberg added.

In February 2021, Blue Cross announced a set of initiatives to address health inequity and racial injustice, including financial investments in nonprofit organizations led by Black individuals, Indigenous community members, and people of color (BIPOC).

In the initiatives, the payer also committed to improving data collection and implementing programs that will foster an inclusive company culture.

Following the announcement, Blue Cross reviewed 2019 administrative and health data for 1.3 million Massachusetts members. The payer identified racial care disparities that ultimately led to lower-quality care for many Black, Asian, and Hispanic members.

Blue Cross members can now provide race, ethnicity, and preferred language information through the payer’s online portal, MyBlue. Being aware of this data may help the payer address specific health conditions and care disparities that members are facing and subsequently improve overall health equity.

The payer’s funding announcement falls in line with its recent commitment to partner with the medical community, including clinicians and physicians, to help address racial health inequities.

Other payers have addressed health inequity and racial care disparities through a variety of initiatives.

For example, Blue Shield of California donated $300,000 to nonprofit organizations that provide mental health support to youths of color through mentorship, social justice activism, technology training, and housing.

Additionally, CVS Health recently invested $9.2 million to help fund an affordable housing development in Washington DC that aims to address homelessness and racial care disparities in underserved communities.

Blue Cross’ parent company, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA), launched a health equity strategy in April 2021 that focuses on improving racial health disparities in maternal health, diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, and behavioral health. Specifically, the payer aims to reduce racial care disparities in maternal health by 50 percent in the next five years.

The Alliance of Community Health Plans (ACHP) has stated that the key to achieving well-rounded health equity is addressing disparities at the individual, community, and systemic levels.