Health Law and Regulation

A new report on health disparities in America from the HHS highlights some of the glaring disparities that exist in the current health system.

Some of the findings from Health Disparities: A Case for Closing the Gap, include:

• Forty-eight percent of all African Americans adults suffer from a chronic disease compared to 39 percent of the general population.
• Eight percent of white Americans develop diabetes while 15 percent of African Americans, 14 percent of Hispanics and 18 percent of American Indians develop diabetes.
• Hispanics were one-third less likely to be counseled on obesity than were whites — only 44 percent of Hispanics received counseling.
• African Americans are 15 percent more likely to be obese than whites.

The report also notes that 40 percent of low-income Americans do not have health insurance. About one-third of the uninsured have a chronic disease and they are six times less likely to receive care for a health problem than the insured. In contrast, only 6 percent of high-income Americans lack insurance.

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, June 9, 2009

Delivering Disease Management to Medically Underserved Populations Plus 21 Strategies for Making and Keeping Contact with Hard-to-Reach Clients

This special report describes how to successfully connect with Medicaid beneficiaries and others in need of healthcare assistance and engage them in successful DM programs. Industry experts share real-life case studies to illustrate how out-of-the-box thinking, community collaborations and multi-channel approaches to client identification are yielding positive results in health outcomes and cost containment. Additionally, HIN's non-scientific online survey on this topic yielded further contact strategies from more than 65 healthcare organizations. This report includes a summary of their suggestions for preventing medical complications and improving the overall health of medically underserved patients, members and clients.

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