“Healthcare needs to move into 2022 and get away from the one-size-fits-all approach that healthcare takes almost everywhere and, instead, treat people like who they are matters.”

That’s the challenge coming from SameSky Health’s founder & CEO Abner Mason whose business is helping some of healthcare’s most notorious “one-size-fits-all-ers” (health plans) improve the way they engage with diverse populations.

California is developing a long-sought statewide health information exchange for providers and payers to deliver better care for patients. The health information exchange, or HIE, has received little public attention. But it would cover 40 million people in California’s 58 counties, and would in part quickly inform emergency room doctors and nurses of a patient’s medical history.

While health care has made significant advances over the years, many populations continue to be marginalized due to a lack of knowledge about their specific needs. SmartBrief spoke with Abner Mason, founder and CEO of SameSky Health, to find out what health plans are doing to improve equity for their members.

Alnylam's third Global Patient Advocacy Leadership Summit focused significantly on topics of diversity, equity and inclusion in the rare disease space. Advocates discussed barriers that affect quality of, and access to, care among certain groups, as well as ways in which they can improve the outreach, information and services they provide to their constituents to foster better health equity and outcomes. During the summit, SameSky Health's Founder and CEO Abner Mason said, “We need to get serious about collecting race, ethnicity and language data. We know we have health disparities, but we have not done a good job of putting metrics around that."

“One of the key needs is to build trust, and that’s going to require treating the patient better,” says Abner Mason, Founder and CEO of SameSky Health. “If you have a healthcare system that can’t do a good job in serving what is becoming the majority of patients—that’s a problem that we have to address.” Read more in this special 45th Anniversary edition of Modern Healthcare.