On this show, we often discuss health disparities, but they're usually focused on populations identified by either race or ethnicity. This episode focuses on strides being made towards policyand measurement that would better address health equity gaps in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBT, community.

Dr. Kellan Baker is a health services researcher with a PhD in health policy and management from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Baker is currently Executive Director of the Whitman-Walker Institute. The Institute’s parent organization, Whitman-Walker Health, began as a Washington, DC, clinic that was especially known for its care for those infected with HIV/AIDS throughout the 1980s. And Whitman-Walker remains stalwart in providing both treatment for and support of LGBTQ communities throughout the country.

Dr. Baker is also a committee member of a U.S. Health & Human Services-supported study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, titled "Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation for the National Institutes of Health." This groundbreaking study helps establish a baseline for understanding the most fundamental hurdles facing LGBT patients, from defining distinctions between sexual orientation and gender identity to concretizing the need for better data collection to advance LGBT health equity and serve LGBT patients.

For a copy of the study, click here: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/download/26424

Dr. Baker was previously a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he focused on regulatory policy across the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, including nondiscrimination laws and ensuring that the benefits of the Affordable Care Act reach LGBTQ communities. He is particularly passionate about enhancing data collection and measurement in order to enhance health equity.

Our guest’s journey to health care – and to Whitman-Walker – is very unique and very personal. Dr. Baker is both a professional and personal expert in the needs of transgender people…and knows the need for active allyship and support throughout the healthcare system for those going through gender transition.

In our "Matt's Facts" segment, we offer self-care tips as part of Mental Health Awareness Month in May. For more information on maintaining good mental health [especially through the pandemic], click here for the National Institutes of Mental Health's recommendations. And click this link for information on NCQA's Distinction in Behavioral Health recognition program.

This week, we answer the age-old question: how do you talk about Health Equity without talking about Health Equity? NCQA’s Health Equity Accreditation Programs provide a strong framework for health care entities to improve equity in their organizations. When it comes to solving gaps in Equity, our guests in this episode come from very different backgrounds and experiences. Yet each one proves how bridging the historic gaps in Health Equity could be the key to solving all of the flaws of modern health care in the United States.

Dr. Joshua Liao is an expert in the topic of value-based payment reform. A board-certified internal medicine physician with the University of Washington, Dr. Liao is Medical Director for Payment Strategy at U-W Medicine, and he holds a position in Health Systems and Population Health in their School of Public Health. He strongly believes that value-based payment structures not only could save providers money…they could save health care as we know it.

Dr. Siobhan Wescott, a Native American of the Athabaskan ethnic group, is Director of American Indian Health and professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Raised in a tiny cabin just outside Fairbanks, Alaska, Dr. Wescott earned her Public Health degree from U-C-L-A and received her medical training from Harvard Medical School. As Dr. Wescott indicates, promoting Equity for any group ultimately supports Equity for all groups.

Our show today celebrates three outstanding health care workers: NCQA’s Patient-Centered Medical Home Certified Content Expert Award Winners.

NCQA’s PCMH is the most widely adopted recognition program of its kind in the United States. Over 10,000 practices have been recognized through our PCMH, with more than 95 organizations in support of the program. The NCQA PCMH Content Expert Certification program certifies individuals who demonstrate comprehensive knowledge of NCQA’s PCMH program. These professionals know the how and the why of supporting NCQA’s endeavors to improve quality through measurement. The 2022 NCQA CCE Award winners represent the best of the best in helping bring hundreds, if not thousands of patients to value-based health care.

This year’s winners are Kelsey Keith, Elizabeth Sledge, and Shannon Nielson.

Kelsey Keith is the PCMH Program Manager for the Northeast Georgia Physician’s Group. Kelsey earned her CCE from NCQA in July of 2014. In her current role, she manages all NCQA programs. Over the past 10 years, she’s transformed health care by helping over sixty ambulatory clinics in achieving PCMH; guiding 26 clinics to achieve NCQA’s Diabetes Recognition Program (DRP); and overseeing 7 Urgent Care Clinics in maintaining our Patient Centered Connected Care (PCCC).

Elizabeth Sledge has served as a Quality Consultant since 2016 at OSIS, a Cincinnati-based Health Center Controlled Network. A Licensed Practical Nurse, she is a NextGen EHR-Certified Professional and has been a PCMH CCE since 2016. She joined the OSIS team with over 17 years of clinical and administrative experience in multiple arenas, from community health and family practice, to internal medicine and immunology. In her role as a consultant, Elizabeth has supported health centers across the country in achieving and sustaining PCMH recognition as well as their Distinction in Behavioral Health, through operational change management and standardized workflow optimization.

Shannon Nielson is one of the owners of CURIS Consulting and Principal Consultant. Shannon previously served in roles as a “C-Suite Health Administrator”, including CIO, COO, and CQO, a Chief Quality Officer. Shannon has over 18 years’ experience working with health centers, hospitals, primary care centers and health care networks, helping them all to improve performance. As for her work with NCQA's PCMH program, Shannon has completed over 200 NCQA PCMH transformations, overseen performance assessments on over 150 community health centers, and assisted networks in developing clinically integrated networks.

In this episode of "Inside Health Care", we discuss the "hospital at home" health care model with two experts in remote care.

Dr. Sally Friedman is a chief endocrinology fellow in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Friedman is an expert in the use of “continuous glucose monitoring” in in-patient diabetes management. She’s been working on this topic with the Medical Learning Institute, which, in turn, is now working with NCQA on a continuing medical education program about diabetes and mealtime insulin. Dr. Friedman joins us today with an update on advances in “Meal-time insulin monitoring” and the overall progress in diabetes treatment and self-monitoring of patients at home.

Following this interview, we talk with Dr. Eliza “Pippa” Shulman, Chief Medical Officer of Medically Home, the world’s first virtual hospital. Medically Home is a tech-enabled clinical enterprise that provides the necessary capabilities to safely shift medical care from hospitals to patients’ homes. Dr. Shulman will be one of our esteemed speakers at NCQA's Quality Talks event, set for April 21, 2022. You can attend either online or live in Washington, DC.

In this episode, we get a look ahead, both at the future of NCQA's Quality Measurement agenda and our Quality Talks 2022 event.

Dr. Eric Schneider is NCQA's recently-appointed Executive Vice President of the Quality Measurement and Research Group. In this role, he helps drive NCQA’s efforts to create a more equitable health care system and to advance the move to digital quality measurement. Before that, he served as a Health Quality expert for both The Commonwealth Fund and the RAND Corporation. He taught public health policy at Harvard Medical and was a practicing primary care internist for over 25 years.

But he was also co-Chair of NCQA’s Committee on Performance Measurement for nearly 10 years, so he’s no stranger to what we do here.

Tosan Boyo is Senior Vice President for Hospital Operations at John Muir Health in the San Francisco Bay area. He also served as a leader of the San Francisco COVID-19 Operations Center, where they had the lowest case rates and highest testing rates of any high-density city in the country. Born in Nigeria and later raised in the U.S., Boyo backpacked around the world, gaining a global take on how Health Equity leads to improved Quality for all. Come see him speak, in person in Washington, DC, or online, at Quality Talks 2022.

In this episode of Inside Health Care, we give you the inside scoop on Quality Talks, coming on April 21, 2022.

But before that, we feature an exclusive interview with one of this year's speakers: Sami Inkinen.

Inkinen is CEO and Co-Founder of Virta Health, which provides treatment to sustainably reverse type 2 diabetes without medications or surgery.

But get this: Inkinen is not a clinician. He’s a technology and data pioneer, a venture capitalist entrepreneur and a physicist. After stints in a nuclear power plant followed by a few years at Microsoft, he co-founded real estate tech company Trulia. And after a multi-billion dollar buyout from an even bigger real estate juggernaut, Zillow, Sami found himself at a crossroads, both professionally and personally.

So, what in the world is he doing starting a new company in health care? You’ll have to hear his explanation…and join us for Quality Talks 2022 on April 21.

Imagine a world where all medical and patient information gets combined and processed efficiently. No matter how many doctors you’d see about a certain problem, each doctor would already have the test results and evaluations of the one before.

And the health systems themselves would automatically grab all that patient info…and use it to fix what’s broken in the patient care system.

Sounds like a lot to ask for. But our guest on Inside Health Care has an answer. It’s called a Learning Health System. And at the leading edge of developing these Learning Health Systems is self-proclaimed “health data liberator” Dr. Shane McNamee.

Dr. McNamee is Chief Medical Information Officer for Smile CDR Inc., which developed a FHIR-based platform for collecting and sharing health data. He also volunteers as Executive Director for B-P-M Plus Health. They’re a company dedicated to improving global health by accelerating best clinical practices and helping health care entities develop better workflows using data, knowledge, and process standards.

Once you hear him speak, you’ll realize that Dr. McNamee is in the right place at the right time for the health care world.

Later in the podcast, we hear from Veronica Locke, Process consultant with the Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) in Dallas, Texas. An NCQA veteran, she served as Senior Manager of Accreditation Policy for NCQA. When it comes to quality assessment and improvement, Veronica is a content champion. She’s here on this episode to tell us about two “tips and tricks” training seminars she’s offering in March 2022 through NCQA: one dealing with Delegation and the other with Credentialing.

Dr. Nichola Davis is Vice President and Chief Population Health Officer at New York City’s Health and Hospitals.

Dr. Davis' new project: The New York City Public Health Corps.

Dayna Bell, Executive Director for Health Care Quality at Aetna/CVS Health, joins later. A long-time NCQA veteran, she reminds us of the importance of being prepared. We talk “Accreditation Readiness,” and delivers details on the webinar of the same name.