Welcome everyone to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
I'm Mariah Muhammad, writer and moderator with Becker's
Healthcare. And I'm thrilled to have with me
today, Pleasant Radford junior, health equity officer at
UCare.
Pleasant, welcome to the podcast. We're very excited
to have you join us today. To get
us started, would you mind please introducing yourself
and telling us a bit about your background?
Absolutely.
My name is Pleasant Raffer junior, and I
am
the health equity officer at UCare.
I've been at UCare for over 4 years
now in this capacity,
and and my job is to
find ways to advance health equity for
the more than 600,000
members that we serve
in the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Outside of of work, I I live in
Minneapolis
with my wife and and 2 children
and
love spending time outdoors,
cooking,
biking,
watching movies,
all that fun stuff when I have the
opportunity to do that.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you so much for
giving us that background.
So health equity is obviously a big trend,
and just a focal point for a lot
of health care organizations.
What are some of the biggest trends and
headwinds you're following right now, that will lead
you into the new year?
Absolutely. The the first thing that comes to
mind is trust.
The American people have
been
very frustrated with the current state of the
health care industry, and I think it has
reached an apex
with the the untimely death of the former
UnitedHealthcare
CEO, Brian Thompson.
It's just a reminder
that
changes are urgently needed to reform
systemic practices
and restore trust
and improve health overall. And and that's gonna
require
a lot of collaboration
and a lot of policy change to make
sure that we are really reforming the the
current state of our health care industry.
Medicaid,
that continues to be a a trend that
I'm I'm following,
especially as we look at the the new
administration
that will start on January 20th.
There have been discussions
to
slash Medicaid,
and and that has a a deep impact
at a federal level, but also at a
state level
as many states use those federal dollars
for their their populations,
their their Medicaid populations,
and Medicare.
And and so if state budgets are are
smaller,
then this will force health officials and state
leaders to make difficult decisions
related to their their residents'
health care, and it will
unfortunately
put those vulnerable populations
at a higher risk of of vulnerability.
And so that's another trend that I'm following.
AI, artificial intelligence, continues to transform
health care delivery
and experience.
And as I said before,
if budgets
are cut
at a state level,
then
many of these states
may start or continue to use AI
to automate their processes.
And and that could
potentially perpetuate
or exacerbate
some of these health care disparities that we
continue to work on.
And it can lead to,
it could lead to to to even more
more problems, administrative problems,
poor health,
and and more dissatisfaction
with the the health care industry.
And finally, aging.
As we know, the country's
aging population
continues to grow.
And
last stat that I read recently shared that
30%
of the $600,000,000,000
spent on Medicaid is allocated
to long term services
and support.
And so once again,
if we see
smaller
funds being allocated
at a federal level and it trickles down
to the state level,
then
the home care industry will will be disproportionately
impacted.
And the direct care workers that provide the
care for
our our disabled population or elderly population,
they they will also be impacted as well.
Yeah. Definitely. I I definitely hope that the
Medicare, Medicaid,
everything does not get cut at all for
any of the 50 states,
especially when we discuss the elderly and aging
population,
and obviously what they need to survive.
How are you thinking about growth for the
future? Are there any programs or initiatives that
you're,
kind of focused on growing in your organization?
Absolutely.
For me, personally,
we continue to
find ways
to deepen our engagement within our community.
It's so important to to understand
what are the the issues that continue to
challenge our members and
and more importantly, how can we work together?
How can we foster meaningful interactions?
How can we continue to solicit that feedback
to cocreate products and initiatives?
As I said before, trust continues to be
a
a a sore point within the health care
industry.
And one way to
to to change that is to continue to
engage with our
with our our members,
to understand what are those sore points
and how can we change them together and
how can we evaluate progress
and and work together. So customer
community engagement, retention,
and satisfaction
are are some of the areas that I'm
focused on related to growth.
Thank you for sharing those. Is is there
a project or initiative from,
this year or maybe the previous year that
yielded the best results for you?
Absolutely.
We continue to
strengthen
the data collection around sexual orientation and gender
identity.
This has been a multiyear effort
that began in 2020
one, I wanna say,
when we reached out to community,
the LGBTQIA
plus community, to understand
how can we make sure that we collect
the data
that you want us to so that you're
seen?
And so through that collaboration,
we were able to create
4 basic questions
related to gender identity,
pronouns,
sexual orientation,
and and sex at birth.
And we've added those questions
into our health risk assessment forms.
And
as of now, we've collected more than 53,000
responses
from our members.
It's small compared to the more than 600,000
members that we serve,
but it's a step in the right direction.
And and we're excited about that because
it's we're now able to
operationalize
that data to improve operations.
For example, we can now work with marketing
to
to tailor our marketing communications
that reflect what's important to the LGBTQIA
plus
population.
We wanna make sure we're using the right
pronouns, that we're using images that reflect
who they are and their health needs.
We can work more with the the quality
department to design,
interventions
and initiatives that that meet the needs of
of our population.
We can continue to work with
customer service, for example,
or our provider network to understand,
do we have the providers that
are,
that are from the community, in the community
to meet the needs of our of our
population. And so we're we're excited. We're excited
that
we have what we have. We'll continue to
to gather more data in 2025.
And, also, we wanna
make sure that
our our staff are trained
on how to use the data, how to
work with our members by using the correct,
pronouns
and addressing them.
So we're we're super excited about that.
Yeah. Those are definitely,
things that I think,
also sound exciting to me.
It sounds like a great step forward into
the right direction. So thank you so much
for sharing all of those thoughts, Pleasant. This
has definitely been an informative discussion.
So, again, I wanna thank you so much
for coming on Becker's HealthCare, and I look
forward to connecting with you again soon. Thank
you so much. Have a great day.