There is growing consensus among national health care policy experts that aligning payment and quality improvement activities offers critical pathways to improve health equity. Among Medicaid populations in particular, there are significant opportunities to use payment innovations to address health care disparities.
Advancing Health Equity: Leading Care, Payment, and Systems Transformation (AHE), made possible through support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, worked with state Medicaid agencies, Medicaid managed care organizations (MCOs), health care provider organizations, community-based organizations, and people with experience being enrolled in Medicaid to address inequities in health and health care. Led in partnership by the Center for Health Care Strategies, the University of Chicago, the Institute for Medicaid Innovation, and the Justice Collective, AHE brought together these key stakeholders to design and implement integrated delivery and payment reform initiatives to reduce health and health care inequities.
The initiative worked to:
- Determine effective ways to align payment and delivery system reform to achieve health equity and implement these reforms;
- Increase the readiness of Medicaid agencies, MCOs, and provider organizations to successfully align payment and delivery system reforms to achieve health equity by creating and disseminating resources and training processes; and
- Inform state- and national-level policy to improve health equity.
From 2018 through 2026, AHE assisted 11 Medicaid stakeholder teams in Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Washington State to advance value-based payment and contracting models aimed at reducing inequities in health and health care. AHE provided participating state teams with tailored technical assistance to promote equity-focused health care delivery and payment systems and build authentic partnerships with communities and members/patients.
Throughout the initiative, AHE disseminated lessons, best practices, and policy recommendations gleaned from its work with state teams. Resources produced through the initiative can be found below and at AdvancingHealthEquity.org.
