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Care quality, disease management, and genetic makeup are core parts of patient health. However, stakeholders must also acknowledge that patient health is much more than medical interventions. This is especially true with value-based patient care taking hold and key concepts such as health equity emerging.
Understanding the different components of health equity is the first step to supporting it in value-based patient care. From there, healthcare professionals can begin to link health equity and health disparities, working to address high-risk patients and the social factors that influence their ability to live their healthiest lives possible.
Below, PatientEngagementHIT.com explores health equity and how the value-based healthcare industry is shaping the term.
WHAT IS HEALTH EQUITY?
Health equity is an important tenet to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion and Healthy People 2020’s agenda, with the organizations defining health equity as “attainment of the highest level of health for all people,” the groups write on their website.
“Achieving health equity requires valuing everyone equally with focused and ongoing societal efforts to address avoidable inequalities, historical and contemporary injustices, and the elimination of health and health care disparities,” Healthy People 2020 adds.