Charlotte, N.C.-based Atrium Health and Minnetonka, Minn.-based insurer UnitedHealthcare won the 2020 CMS Health Equity Award.
The award recognizes healthcare organizations that have "demonstrated their commitment to health equity through a strategic approach to identifying, prioritizing and addressing health disparities."
Atrium Health was recognized for its efforts to strengthen data and collaborate with community partners to improve the health of the community it serves. The hospital network redesigned its EHR to collect more precise demographic data and created a tool that stratified the data related to several factors, including mortality, diabetes and colorectal cancer screening.
It then used the tool and data to implement community-specific interventions, which led to a 62.7-percent decrease in the disparity of colorectal screenings for Hispanic men compared to the overall screening rate for males from 2018 to 2019.
UnitedHealthcare was honored for identifying gaps in care among Medicaid enrollees for postpartum care and implementing interventions in three states to reduce those gaps. The insurer worked with community partners to promote early and comprehensive postpartum care in Michigan, Ohio and Hawaii. Their efforts led to decreases in disparities in timely postpartum care for black women and rural women from 2018 to 2019. In Ohio, disparities in timely postpartum care for black women dropped by 83.2 percent.