“Disparities in health and health care persist despite decades of research and widespread efforts to improve health in the United States. These disparities are reflected among vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries. These individuals typically have lower preventive care utilization, limited access to chronic disease management, lower patient experience scores, and higher rates of hospital readmissions and chronic disease compared to their non-minority counterparts.”
— Paving The Way to Equity: A Progress Report, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
Health equity
Health equity
Signify is deeply committed to the equitable care and treatment of all people. Since 2019, more than 40% of our in-home health evaluations have been conducted in areas designated as lower income, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau. We believe that meeting people where they are is essential to targeting and addressing the systemic issues that present barriers to health and quality of life.
Visiting patients where they live gives us a broader view of their overall well-being than can occur in a physician’s office, and allows us to capture hundreds of data points on medical, clinical, pharmaceutical, functional, social, behavioral, and environmental aspects of people’s lives. This high quality, reliable data — which includes necessary detail on race and ethnicity, as well as other patient-specific features — can help reduce healthcare inequities.
We support and promote efforts to ensure the availability of, and reliance on, high quality data and science in guiding policies and practices to address healthcare inequities. The data we analyze and share contributes to our customers’ and government’s understanding of the social and clinical variations that exist in the diverse populations they entrust to us.
Signify is taking a number of important steps to promote greater health equity, including:
- Engaging directly with policymakers to inform policy development and advocate for data quality and availability to foster awareness and understanding of health disparities
- Leveraging internal and external data to identify opportunities to close care gaps, improve care quality, inform policy, and measure progress
- Reviewing our algorithms to ensure they harbor no implicit bias
- Supporting the efforts of our customers and partners to address health and/or social disparities
- Developing internal data collection standards and criteria to help identify potential social and clinical health disparities
SDOH challenges faced by older adults in 2021
Our in-home health evaluations consistently identify SDOH challenges that older adults face in their communities, many of which have been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Notable challenges due to social isolation, mental health and food insecurity can have deleterious effects on populations with chronic conditions and often require more frequent contact with providers, complex disease management, and specific dietary needs.