HHS supports strategies to reduce costs, improve quality of healthcare services, and ensure access to safe medical devices and drugs for everyone. HHS develops and implements payment models in partnership with healthcare providers and establishes other incentives to improve quality care while reducing healthcare spending. HHS implements and assesses approaches to improve healthcare quality, and address disparities in healthcare quality, treatment, and outcomes. The Department also improves patient safety, strengthens access to safe and effective medical products and devices, and expands approaches to safely exchange information among patients, providers, and payers. Below is a selection of strategies HHS is implementing.
In the context of HHS, this Strategic Plan adopts the definition of underserved populations listed in Executive Order 13985: Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities through the Federal Government to refer to "populations sharing a particular characteristic, as well as geographic communities, who have been systematically denied a full opportunity to participate in aspects of economic, social, and civic life"; this definition includes individuals who belong to underserved communities that have been denied such treatment, such as Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality. Individuals may belong to more than one underserved community and face intersecting barriers.
Contributing OpDivs and StaffDivs
AHRQ, ASPE, CDC, CMS, FDA, HRSA, IHS, NIH, OASH, and ONC work to achieve this objective.
Strategies
Partner with providers to develop payment models and other incentives to expand options for quality care at lower costs
- Collaborate with states, community-based organizations, and other stakeholders to design innovative, targeted, value-based payment models to increase recruitment of providers that care for predominantly underserved populations and provide them with support to improve their awareness of the benefits of alternative payment models that aim to decrease health inequities.
- Partner with private payers, states, and other regional healthcare organizations to move primary care providers away from fee-for-service and into payment models that support the delivery of effective, comprehensive, patient-centered care for their patients through the testing of models that reward providers for delivering high-quality care, improve health outcomes, and advance healthy equity.
- Provide incentives and flexibilities to states to shift toward more value-based payments in their Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Programs.
- Partner with states and external quality measure development experts to define and encourage use of a core set of metrics to measure provider effectiveness in Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and pay-for-performance programs, including reliable metrics of access to care, gaps in care, disparities, health equity, and achieving positive outcomes for all populations.
Implement and assess approaches to improve healthcare quality, and address disparities in healthcare quality, treatment, and outcomes
- Promote and support implementation of the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care by health professionals, health systems and organizations and in HHS programs to improve the quality of care and reduce health disparities by ensuring the provision of services that are respectful of and responsive to individuals' health needs, preferences, culture, and preferred language.
- Improve healthcare quality by defining and tracking progress on core clinical measures that target high-priority health conditions and services, such as cancer, chronic disease, prenatal care, HIV screening, antimicrobial resistance, and immunizations.
- Better understand the barriers and obstacles to using clinical decision support tools that improve health outcomes in healthcare settings.
- Implement an equity impact strategy to support data-driven quality improvement approaches to identify and address health disparities in access to, use of, and outcomes from programs and policies among underserved populations.
- Assess treatment utilization to identify disparities in and barriers to access to effective, appropriate, and quality treatment for underserved populations, and implement policies to address identified disparities.
- Support research and evaluation of expanded use and availability of telehealth and telemedicine, including effects on cost, reimbursement, access, and care outcomes and harms, to inform the long-term approach to using this technology and to improve access to care for underserved populations.
- Engage stakeholders from underserved populations to provide opportunities for input to inform program and policy efforts to improve healthcare quality.
- Engage in tribal and Urban Indian Organization consultation and confer on what improving quality health care services mean.
Strengthen patient safety improvements and access to affordable medications and medical products to reduce spending for consumers and throughout the health care system
- Collaborate with partners and stakeholders to identify, design, implement, evaluate, and sustain patient safety improvements that address patient risks, hazards, and harm.
- Support patient safety research to prevent threats to patient safety including healthcare-associated infections.
- Improve access to safe and effective prescription drugs, biologics, and medical devices, and lower costs by promoting generic and biosimilar competition, developing over-the-counter medical products, and providing discounts on medicines to safety-net hospitals and clinics.
- Ensure adequate and continued access to safe and effective medical products by developing novel approaches to increase domestic manufacturing capacity, agility, and efficiency, including through partnerships.
- Ensure continued access to safe medical devices and drugs by assessing the role of foreign and U.S. supply chains in addressing shortages of drugs, medical devices, or required ingredients and components, and providing options for strengthening and improving coordination of global supply chain systems.
- Foster innovation by supporting public-private research and prioritizing payment and service delivery models that test ways to reduce program and beneficiary spending on prescription drugs, support increased utilization of biosimilars and generic drugs, and lower overall spending while improving quality and beneficiary health.
Expand approaches to safely exchange health information between patients, providers, and payers
- Enable individuals to access their health information by ensuring they can view and interact with their data via secure mobile apps, patient portals, and other technologies
- Promote interoperability and data sharing through consensus-based, widely-accepted standards to ensure health information, including social determinants of health information, is available for patient care across healthcare settings, public health, research, and emergency and disaster preparedness, response, and recovery.
