Striving For Equity In Access To And Use Of Specialty Care

The Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation’s Specialty Care initiative was included in an August 1, 2016 blog post on healthaffairsblog.com. The piece looks at grantees selected by the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation to address inequities in access to, and utilization of, specialty care services in the United States.

The blog post defines the goal of the initiative to “catalyze sustainable improvement and expansion of specialty care service delivery by safety-net providers, so as to achieve optimal and more equitable outcomes for the people they serve who are living with complex diseases such as cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and HIV/AIDS…Poor access to timely, high-quality specialty care causes thousands of preventable deaths each year, particularly among low-income, minority, and rural populations who are fighting serious diseases. Studies suggest that eliminating racial disparities in cancer care alone would result in 250,000 fewer cancer deaths annually.”

About CHLPI’s work on specialty care:

The Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, a law clinic at Harvard Law School that advocates for legal, regulatory, and policy reforms, is creating for the grantees tailored policy and advocacy road maps that use strategies ranging from pursuing state Medicaid amendments for new patient care and nonmedical social support models, to advocating for broader CMS reimbursement of telemedicine services in rural areas, to policy maker education about migrant health care services.

Read “Striving For Equity In Access To And Use Of Specialty Care” in full.

Learn more about CHLPI’s Specialty Care initiative.