Business Case Guide

Operationalizing health equity in practice means getting serious about aligning your operational model with the needs of specific subpopulations. Building your business case will help you consider how to distribute resources to effectively reduce health disparities. Consider the following as you think about revenue streams, service lines, care models, team composition and skill sets needed to achieve health equity:

Assess how organizational equity goals are reflected in operations.

• Lowell Community Health Center’s strategic plan goals are a good example of how organizational goals reflect equity: Strategic Plan: Cultivating Health.

Examine the resource allocation required to reach patient subpopulations that need additional support. You may, for example, need to increase your budget to enhance the work of community health workers on specific teams.

• The CMS Office of Minority Health provides several case studies that show how health care providers allocated resources to reduce health disparities: Building an Organizational Response to Health Disparities: Five Pioneers from the Field Report.
• Advancing Health Equity shares lessons learned from health care provider and health plan partnerships to promote equity by integrating payment and delivery system reforms. Designing and Implementing Integrated Care and Payment Transformation Initiatives to Advance Health Equity.

Assess the impacts of different payment models on the sustainability of your equity-based work. Consider where savings or additional revenue from one service line may support the sustainability of another service line.

• Examples of payment model impacts on equity focused business models: The Perils and Payoffs of Alternative Payment Models for Community Health Centers.
• The Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network (HCP-LAN) offers guidance for implementing alternative payment models within your organization: Advancing Health Equity through APMs.

Remember to periodically realign your budget and operational decisions with your equity priorities as you learn new information.