NeHC Panelist: Health IT efforts must include care for underserved

If these are challenging times for healthcare, things are also moving fast, and it’s important that health IT efforts include a focus on delivering care to underserved communities, Garth Graham, MD, MPH, deputy assistant secretary for minority health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health, said in an interview.

Graham outlined some Office of Minority Health initiatives during the March 9 National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) panel discussion, titled “Bridging the Digital Divide: Connecting Patients and Providers to Eliminate Health Disparities.”

The Office of Minority Health, established in 1986, was reauthorized through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which has also created additional infrastructure in the form of other minority health offices in different agencies, he said. “A lot of that has helped amplify minority health and disparities activities across the board.”

At the same time, there has been a skyrocketing increase in public as well as private expenditures: Healthcare disparities directly contribute to those healthcare expenditures, he said. Medicaid, which has been the backbone of insuring underserved patients, has been cut in every state—even as the projected growth rate in Medicaid enrollment is expected to hit 6.1 percent in fiscal 2011. Finally, with minorities accounting for almost 90 percent of population growth in the future, “demographics will change the way we deal with [healthcare] issues,” said Graham.

The Office of Minority Health is partnering with Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and other organizations on the National Health IT Collaborative for Underserved, which aims to bring the benefits of health IT to underserved communities. The collaboration is working on solutions including a high-touch grassroots-level educational outreach strategy in Georgia, Northern California and South Florida to educate the local healthcare community on the benefits of health IT, and to connect providers with Regional Extension Centers and others in those areas.

In addition, there’s a lot of alignment going on among the ONC, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and other federal agencies around policies and programs, according to Graham.

“We want to make sure, as we pull together that alignment, that part of the focus continues to be to make sure we bring the benefits of health IT to underserved communities. We continue to explore the efficacy of different modalities, including telehealth and similar technologies … [and] work with other partners in the private sector and advocacy groups like SHIRE [Summit Health Institute for Research and Education] and HIMSS,” he said.

The Office of Minority Health is spearheading an effort, along with ONC, to develop an HHS Health IT Disparities strategic plan, hopefully to be released by summer or early fall. Components of the plan include:

• Create health IT communities of excellence;
• Enable linkage of businesses, providers and consumers;
• Create educational opportunities; and
• Educate non-minority communities about the disparities and challenges in terms of health IT.

The office is also seeking to lead innovation in public/private partnerships in emerging health IT areas. For example, mobile health in 2010 accounted for $1.5 billion of potential revenues from digital health technology, and that figure is expected to rise to $5.5 billion by 2015, said Graham. “We want to make sure, as we continue to invest and spend in this area, as we look at aging-in-place services, chronic care and things like that, that we also integrate a focus on health disparities.

“We are moving at a fast pace within HHS to make sure we adequately address needs of minority and other underserved communities within the confines of health IT, and we’re happy to have ONC and others as partners in this effort,” Graham concluded.