UnitedHealthcare, a UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) company, received the prestigious Recognizing Innovation in Multicultural Health Care Award by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for the company’s efforts to provide its customers with culturally and linguistically appropriate health care services.
NCQA recognized UnitedHealthcare’s “In-Language Member and Public Outreach in New York’s Asian Community Initiative,” an outreach program by the company’s Asian Initiatives team designed to help Chinese Americans enrolled in the company’s SecureHorizons Medicare Advantage plans understand and utilize social welfare resources.
Central to the program is a dedicated staff of UnitedHealthcare social service professionals that offer information, counseling and application assistance for social benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, prescription drug coverage, and supplemental security income, as well as assistance with telephone and utility bills, property taxes, rent-increase exemption and school tax credit. Also, the staff helps frail seniors with coordinated long-term home care, caregiver respite, meals-on-wheels and transportation services.
In addition, UnitedHealthcare established two in-language walk-in centers that serve more than 200 Chinese- as well as Korean-speaking seniors daily in the heart of New York City’s Chinatown and Flushing areas, partnered with local Chinese media to host public seminars, and have presented regularly at senior centers and community council meetings citywide.
“Many Chinese-speaking seniors are first-generation immigrants who do not know how to navigate the social-welfare system and often encounter language barriers that prevent them from accessing vital, needed benefits,” said Christopher Law, vice president of Asian Initiatives at UnitedHealthcare. “We developed the In-Language Member and Public Outreach program for Chinese-speaking seniors with the goal of becoming a trusted, one-stop source that understands their concerns and helps them utilize important social-welfare resources that are available to them.”
UnitedHealthcare data indicate the success of its effort to engage Chinese Americans to improve their health and quality of life. Since the program’s inception, UnitedHealthcare’s dedicated social service professionals have answered more than 10,000 phone calls through its customer-care hotline; helped more than 7,500 customers apply for government benefits and entitlement programs and save millions of dollars in medical premiums, prescription drug, food and transportation costs, utilities, rent and property taxes; and aided hundreds of customers in obtaining long-term home care and caregiver respite services to prevent premature institutional care and/or frequent hospitalization.
“These and other data reinforce the need for health plans to better engage multicultural and ethnic communities to improve health outcomes and enhance their quality of life,” said Law. “The In-language Member and Public Outreach program reflects UnitedHealthcare’s commitment to deliver culturally and linguistically relevant services that transcend traditional health care boundaries and to effectively address disparities in accessing health care resources. Our focus is the belief that everything we do is from the community, in the community and for the community.”
“UnitedHealthcare’s innovative effort to improve the lives of Chinese Americans is a model for health plans across the country,” said Margaret E. O’Kane, president of NCQA. “The gaps in care that persist for minorities and for non-English-speakers result in serious consequences: unnecessary disability and premature death for thousands.”
According to the landmark 2002 Institute of Medicine study, “Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care,” minorities in the U.S. tend to get lower quality health care than caucasians, even when such factors as medical conditions, insurance and economic status are equivalent.
UnitedHealthcare will be recognized at a ceremony Sept. 18 in San Francisco. The award, sponsored by The California Endowment with support from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and The Office of Minority Health, is part of NCQA’s efforts to improve the quality of health care in the U.S. through development of a truly multicultural health care system.
This is UnitedHealthcare’s third NCQA Recognizing Innovation in Multicultural Health Care Award. The company received an additional award this year for its “Enhanced Bilingual Service and Member Access Initiative” (see accompanying news release, “UnitedHealthcare’s Latino Health Initiative recognized by National Committee for Quality Assurance for innovative efforts to reduce health care disparities for Hispanics”). Last year, UnitedHealthcare was recognized for its interactive Asian-language provider directories.
For information about upcoming conferences on multicultural health care, visit www.ncqa.org
About NCQA
NCQA is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations and recognizes physicians in key clinical areas. NCQA’s Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) is the most widely used performance measurement tool in health care. NCQA is committed to providing health care quality information through the Web, media and data licensing agreements in order to help consumers, employers and others make more informed health care choices. For more information, visit www.ncqa.org.
About The California Endowment
The California Endowment, a private, statewide health foundation, was established in 1996 to expand access to affordable, quality health care for underserved individuals and communities, and to promote fundamental improvements in the health status of all Californians. For more information, visit www.calendow.org.
About UnitedHealthcare
UnitedHealthcare (www.unitedhealthcare.com) provides a full spectrum of consumer-oriented health benefit plans and services to individuals, public sector employers and businesses of all sizes, including more than half of the Fortune 100 companies. The company organizes access to quality, affordable health care services on behalf of more than 25 million individual consumers, contracting directly with more than 560,000 physicians and care professionals and 4,800 hospitals to offer them broad, convenient access to services nationwide. UnitedHealthcare is one of the businesses of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), a diversified Fortune 50 health and well-being company.
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