Initial Steps in Addressing Nation’s Health Inequities
Health equity is achieved when everyone has a reasonable opportunity to be as healthy as possible.
Health equity is achieved when everyone has a reasonable opportunity to be as healthy as possible. This requires removing barriers to access medications and care, such as the consequences of poverty and discrimination, including powerlessness and lack of access to good jobs with fair pay, quality education and housing, safe environments and health care. Health equities are reflected in differences in length of life, quality of life, rates of disease, disability and death, severity of disease and access to treatment.
Health inequity has led to a disproportionate impact on patients of color with a chronic or rare disorder, including barriers to access for early and accurate diagnosis, affordable health care, referrals to specialists, provision of educational and support services, and participation in clinical trials.
Addressing health inequities begins by identifying social determinants of health (SDoH), such as living and working environments, conditions in which people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning and quality-of-life outcomes.
Focus on SDoH
Recent studies estimate that social determinants can be responsible for up to 80-90% of a health outcome. Conditions such as diabetes, asthma, heart disease and obesity are all linked to environments, cultures and behaviors that impact individuals, creating a complex web of challenges that often lead to eroding health, limited functionality and avoidable health costs.
Reducing the impact of rare and chronic diseases will require payers and providers to investigate the social determinants – including non-clinical issues – that are at the root of chronic disease.
AscellaHealth’s patient-first specialty approach assists employers, payers, TPAs and other stakeholders in effectively addressing SDoH. Our specialty pharmacy benefit management services (SPBM) are designed to reduce costs, increase specialty drug availability and improve patient outcomes through appropriate medication therapy management that factors in SDoH for each patient.
With effective management of the complications of chronic illness and rare disease, AscellaHealth’s innovative SP programs strive to mitigate unnecessary costs--including the SDoH that contribute to these costs—by providing intended clinical outcomes and support for the member experience. This improves the condition, monitors adherence, provides dosing accuracy, prevents avoidable ER visits, reports cost savings and enhances the patient journey.
To learn more visit www.AscellaHealth.com