Payer Execs Say Diversity Programs Must Start at Top

by Jane Anderson

Internal equity and diversity programs could be a powerful business strategy for plans that serve under-resourced populations, two experts say. But to make these programs truly effective, organizations must start at the top and embed equity and diversity principles in everything they do, moving beyond a mere "box-checking" mentality, said Sachin Jain, M.D., president and CEO of SCAN Group and SCAN Health Plan.

"We have to lead with new leadership. We have to evolve our cultural dialogue around these topics," Jain said during a Dec. 8 virtual panel at America’s Health Insurance Plans' Consumer Experience & Digital Health Forum 2020. "But we also have to recognize that you can't be a good business in 2020 and not actually be excellent at serving diverse populations. I see that, from the seat that I'm in, as opportunity."

When Jain came on board in June as CEO of SCAN Health Plan, he directed the organization to look at data on racial equity and diversity. "Our African-American employees trust [company] leadership less than our non-African-American employees by about 0.5 on a five-point scale. That's a big problem," he said. "On Medicare Advantage star measures, our African-American patients do way worse on pharmacy measures than our white patients. That's an opportunity for us to get better."

SCAN's leaders recognized that they were not "thinking diversely across all of our processes across the organization," Jain said. To begin remedying that, the health plan recently announced that it hired three new executives and promoted another to support diversity.

Aletha Maybank, M.D., chief health equity officer and group vice president at the American Medical Association Center for Health Equity, said that the AMA is performing many of the same tasks as SCAN Health Plan: "looking at our performance metrics, our policies, our culture of the organization to make sure that we’re embedding equity in this way."

Most health care leaders understand that they need to promote diversity and equity among their leadership and workforce, Maybank said. But to make significant progress, "every single sector within our institution has to be looked at."

Organizations first need to educate teams "so that folks actually get this." Then, those teams can change policies, practices, culture and research, she said.

From Health Plan Weekly