Nearly two decades ago, providers first familiarized themselves with the Triple Aim, which sought to reduce healthcare costs, improve patient experiences and advance population health. Since then, industrywide goals to improve healthcare have included enhancing provider experiences with the Quadruple Aim and advancing health equity with the Quintuple Aim.
Though health equity is a more recent addition, many organizations have already been doing the work to provide innovative, comprehensive care to address disparities in their communities.
AltaMed Health Services, a Los Angeles-based federally qualified health center, is one organization that continues to reduce care gaps by providing culturally sensitive care to a largely low-income, multiethnic, multilingual and underinsured patient population. When the organization went live with Epic in 2019, for instance, it made sure its Spanish version of MyChart was appropriately translated and usable to daily speakers.
“This is a call to action to everybody that we have to close the health equity divide,” says Ray Lowe, senior vice president and CIO at AltaMed. “We need to work together to ensure that millions of people are not left behind, that they are not precluded from healthcare, that they have proper, quality access to care.”
Lowe, who was named a 2023 HIMSS Changemaker in Health by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, spoke to HealthTech about aligning innovation with his organization’s strategic mission and the evolving role of the healthcare CIO.
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