Setting a course for equality in healthcare
The what and why
To us, the golden rule is always the right way to go. Treat others as you want to be treated. It’s really as simple as that. Every patient should get the same quality of care and, most importantly, that care should be catered to the patient.
So we created Equity Compass 360°, a company-wide initiative dedicated to eliminating health disparities and delivering equal care to all Moda Health members.
You may be wondering then, why is the golden rule so important to us? It’s a good question, now here’s the harsh reality: study after study has shown that our nation has a gap in quality care for all people, even those with health benefits. This gap is caused by socioeconomic status. That means that people receive different care based on factors like their income, education, primary language, race and ethnicity, where they live, etc. It’s creating an inequality in our society that we at Moda Health will not stand for.
For Equity Compass 360°, we’ve set what some have told us are pretty big goals. That’s okay; we like to aim high, especially when it leads to fairness. We have a mission and vision, and are more than ready to tackle our goals. Let us tell you more about them.
Mission: To eliminate health disparities in order to provide the highest quality of care to all Moda Health members and the communities we serve.
Vision: Within five years, and into the future, Moda Health will continue to improve the quality of care for all members by becoming an organization sensitive to the diversity of our entire membership.
Goals:
- Learn more about our member population
- Make materials easier to understand
- Increase knowledge about various cultures
- Improve the quality of direct patient care
- Increase our knowledge and sensitivity to our diverse population
So how exactly are we doing it?
Well, we’re working closely with other healthcare organizations to develop workplace strategies and identify racial and ethnic disparities. Through these ongoing efforts, we’ve already taken several important steps to better understand our current practices and find areas of potential opportunity, including:
- Created an EC360° executive-supported workgroup to govern the strategic direction of our health equity efforts. This group will hold us all accountable for keeping equality in every aspect of our business.
- Launched a five-year strategic plan, Equity Compass 360°: Setting a course for equality and diversity in healthcare, to guide our efforts toward achieving equality and diversity in healthcare.
- Collected and analyzed our race, ethnicity and language data from more than 30 percent of our commercial medical population. This information will help us better recognize and understand cultural and diversity trends within our population.
- Adopted a company-wide set of Cultural Sensitivity and Health Literacy (CSHL) standards to better communicate with all our members and communities on how to lead healthy lives. These standards will ensure that we continue to improve the quality and effectiveness of how we communicate with all of our members.
- Trained our executives, directors, managers and supervisors in health literacy and the use of plain language. They, in turn, will share this training with their respective teams and we will work to transition all communication to plain language.
- To demonstrate our commitment to embrace and celebrate diversity in our workforce, we are establishing an Employee Diversity Council to show our appreciation for diversity, address any related issues, and to promote the understanding, respect and acceptance among all of our employees.
Want to learn more?
If you’d like to learn more about what we’re doing to achieve equality in healthcare, check out the following programs.
- Disparities Leadership Program. This year-long executive leadership program is designed to tackle racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare. In 2011 and 2012, members of our team were accepted on full scholarship to participate in this national program led by Massachusetts General Hospital and sponsored by Harvard Medical School. The knowledge and skills we’ve learned from this program play a central role in every step we take to turn our goals into reality.
- National Health Plan Collaborative. We are an active member of this groundbreaking project, which brings together health plans across the country to achieve one common goal: eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare.
- National Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) Standards. We use these standards to guide all efforts toward equality in healthcare. These standards are recommended by federal, state, and national accrediting agencies for adoption by healthcare organizations to promote health equity and eliminate health disparities.
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We have exciting news to share. ODS is changing its name to Moda Health.
Moda comes from the latin term "modus" and means "a way". We picked it because that's what we are here to do: help our communities find a way to better health.
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