On June 20, 2023, the Alliance of Community Health Plans (ACHP) and Wolters Kluwer led a webinar addressing the methodology and importance of incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) concepts into care management and member engagement programs. With attendees representing millions of covered lives throughout the US, the webinar presented insights from Wolters Kluwer processes, as well as identified the questions and challenges payers are facing.
Highlighting solutions from Wolters Kluwer’s UpToDate® Member Engagement solutions (named Emmi® at the time of the webinar), presenters Evan Heigert and Michael Lauber gave actionable advice on incorporating DE&I into member engagement content.
What DE&I challenges do payers face?
Heigert began by polling the audience on their biggest DE&I pain points and received responses that spanned a variety of options, including:
- Lack of goals and metrics
- Limited educational materials
- Being unsure of where to begin implementing changes
Regardless of the challenges, the need for DE&I content is clear. Presenters quoted the National Library of Medicine in highlighting that 80 million US adults have low health literacy and noted that the US Department of Education reports 65% of those impacted come from Black, Hispanic, or other minority communities.
Core pillars of incorporating DE&I considerations in member education
Wolters Kluwer has adopted an approach that ensures DE&I considerations are a cornerstone of its content and technological development, Heigert and Lauber explained. These include:
- Diversity, which refers to not only the presence but also the celebration of diversity in content. Using specialty design tools, the artists can include images of members and clinicians across multiple races and ethnicities in their programs.
- Health Literacy, to ensure that content is understandable and actionable. This can include using visual metaphors, accessible design principles, and offering content in multiple languages to make it accessible to more members.
- Inclusion, which requires a strong focus on personalization. Tactics here range from including voice artists representing different races and cultures, as well as presenting options for users to self-select content that is most applicable to their situation.
Increasing focus on DE&I in STARS ratings
Lauber, a strategic account lead from Wolters Kluwer, shared insights into why a focus on DE&I is all the more pressing for payers and health plans in the current healthcare environment. Recently announced changes to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) STARS rating criteria put heavy emphasis on DE&I considerations, prompting a great deal of investment to meet the challenge.
Further, many payers are seeing employer groups asking for this focus as part of plan design, making its inclusion critical to future success.
Helping payers meet members where they are
The webinar ended with an ACHP-facilitated Q&A session. Attendees posed questions around privacy concerns, as well as considerations in developing broader DE&I programs. Speakers connected the questions to Wolters Kluwer member engagement solutions, like UpToDate Guide and UpToDate Outreach, to showcase how these tools may represent a strong option as a component of a broader DE&I strategy.
To learn more, watch the full webinar, “Amplifying Member Engagement through DE&I.”
Note: At the time of the webinar, the solution names were Emmi, EmmiGuide, and EmmiOutreach.