UHG Funds Research on Digital Access to Care Solutions

October 21, 2019 - The United Health Foundation, UnitedHealth Group’s (UHG’s) philanthropic arm, will partner with the Morehouse School of Medicine’s National Center for Primary Care to determine whether digital access to care solutions can resolve disparities in the south, the companies announced.

“This partnership demonstrates the United Health Foundation’s and Morehouse School of Medicine’s shared commitment to pioneering the next generation of digital health solutions that will expand access to care and improve health outcomes for underserved patients and support primary care providers across the Southeast,” said Cory B. Alexander, executive vice president of corporate affairs at UnitedHealth Group.

The grant commits to support the National Center for Primary Care for three years with $1.1 million in funding. The partnership targets communities in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee, both urban and rural, who do not have consistent access to care.

Specifically, the researchers will be focusing on providing access to diabetes care and using technology to lower the maternal mortality rate in the area.

With UHG’s funding, Morehouse School of Medicine will connect with professionals in the targeted communities to assess whether digital solutions will best alleviate the challenges they and their patients face. The focus groups in all four states. They will also hold interviews with health care providers from these regions.

In addition to learning from personal experiences, the researchers will collect data from surveys healthcare professionals and Medicaid claims data from each state.

UHG and Morehouse School of Medicine have three main goals for this partnership.

First, the research will expand the payer’s and research institution’s comprehension of whether health technologies will better enable patients to access care.

Second, it will help the partners understand how patients in underserved areas obtain access to health technology solutions through their physicians.

Third, using this research, the partners will be able to formulate a strategy for easing access to digital health solutions for the targeted regions.

“Morehouse School of Medicine is uniquely positioned to conduct this research by virtue of our deep roots providing education and technical support for electronic health records, health information exchange, and CMS value-based payment initiatives,” said Dominic Mack, professor in the department of family medicine and director of the National Center for Primary Care at Morehouse School of Medicine.

“With $21 million in funding, MSM’s National Center for Primary Care has assisted more than 5,000 primary care providers and rural hospitals in Georgia to adopt and meaningfully use electronic health records.”

When NPR, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation collaborated to research rural American’s access to care earlier this year, their research uncovered lack of affordability and limited provider network being two major obstacles.

To resolve these issues, patients started turning to digital options, specifically telehealth. Over the past few years, 25 percent of rural adults engaged in health-related activities by phone. These activities include receiving diagnoses and treatment options from a healthcare provider over the phone, a live video feed, or another mobile-enabled communication channel.

However, four in ten of those who took advantage of telehealth options received a bill from their health payer for using the service, the research also revealed.

A separate study conducted by the American Psychological Association in early 2018 demonstrated that, while urban centers may have greater access to pharmacies and centers for care, residents experience a high amount of stress, with healthcare costs being a common stressor.

Urban residents experienced on average around 5.2 level of stress on a 10.0 point scale, compared to rural areas which had on average a 4.7. Among their stress points were topics such as health insurance affordability, having strong health insurance, and medical bills.

UHG’s interest in using mobile technology as a digital health tool has precedent. Earlier this year, UHG’s technology arm, Optum, partnered with Talkspace to create a behavioral healthcare app, also known as a telemental solution.

While technology is a common solution for rural areas, UHG and Morehouse School of Medicine’s research could demonstrate not only whether those solutions are effective but also how those can be extended to urban areas that face different access to care challenges.