How Henry Ford Health Increases Healthcare Equity by Closing the Telehealth Gap
Michigan’s prominent health care system, Henry Ford Health, recently held a two-day digital health summit titled, “Advancing Health Equity: Bridging the Telehealth Divide.”
The first day was held at Henry Ford Innovations, located on the campus of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The second day of the summit took place at the non-profit healthcare organization Focus:HOPE in the Hope Village neighborhood of Motor City.
The audience on both days consisted of a wide range of participants, with a strong emphasis on social organizations. Clinical and administrative stakeholders from Henry Ford Health, life and science partners, researchers, funders, payers, city and state employees and community organizations attended.
Healthcare IT news recently spoke with Ally Hunter, virtual care consultant at Henry Ford Health, for a recap of the summit and a discussion about some takeaways from the event.
Q. What were the objectives of your summit?
A. The idea for this summit came from the Telehealth Equity Catalyst award given to Henry Ford Health by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Dr. Denise White-Perkins, chair of family medicine at Henry Ford Health, is the principal investigator on the grant. Thor Person, a research project manager, and I are supporting the grant work.
There’s a lot of great work being done the digital equity space, particularly in the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan. It is also a relatively newer space in equity investing, but one that is important as our world becomes increasingly digital and patients are asked to access their healthcare digitally.
Our team saw an opportunity to create the space to bring together cross-functional parties to tackle this problem from multiple angles. We also realized that when these conversations are happening, people with lived or living experiences are often not at the table, and we wanted to turn this story on its head.
We had three goals for this event. First, foster an environment of radical collaboration, humility, and inclusivity that is action-oriented and leverages assets. Second, tap into the knowledge and lived experience of the participants involved in our community engagement sessions – community members and organizations, city and state staff, physicians, etc.
And third, collect idea content that can be turned into solutions and be the source of future development through a framework model.
Q. What were two or three topics that received the most attention, and why?
A. Most of our summit focused on our community engagement sessions. These sessions were split into six groups: older adults, general adults, and children and family. Each group was tasked with identifying an area of focus from the digital equity methodology.
This methodology includes five areas that need to be addressed the issue of digital equality. These areas are advocacy and awareness, access and affordability, technical support, digital skills and devices. We focused the conversations on trying to understand the existing barriers, assets and opportunities in these areas.
While digital health has been around for a while, conversations about what digital equity is and how it applies to telehealth have only begun in recent years. Knowing this, it was important for us to start conversations that promoted the sharing of knowledge and resources, as well as an increase in knowledge on this topic.
If participants could go home with one new piece of knowledge to take back to their team and their work, that was a win for our team. At the end of the community engagement sessions, we asked participants to write down the key insights they thought Henry Ford Health needed to know as it addressed digital and telehealth equity.
Additionally, we were able to highlight some great community organizations serving the Detroit area and Metro Detroit in the digital equity space. These presentations allowed us to highlight the diligent work being done in our community and foster connection among the diverse attendees. The following civil society organizations shared their work over two days.
The purpose of the The City of Detroit’s Office of Digital Equity and Inclusion is to provide residents with digital equality tools, increasing access and digital equality in the long term.
Social enterprise Human IT creates equitable access to opportunity by providing devices, internet access, digital skills training and technical support to communities left on the wrong side of the digital divide, while simultaneously empowering businesses and organizations to do good by diverting technology from landfills to lead and protect our planet.
The Detroit Area Agency on Aging shared their Senior Telehealth Connect program in partnership with Michigan-based Behavioral Health Associates.
The organization Strengthen my future shared their digital upskilling program, which provides training and resources to seniors, returning citizens and low-income individuals, bridging the digital divide and improving their technology skills for the future.
The Senior regional cooperation emphasized the work they do and the importance of collaboration between all partners and ensuring a seat at the table. The organization is a network of more than 35 organizations serving the needs of older adults and individuals with disabilities in and throughout Southeast Michigan as they face barriers to achieving a successful quality of life at home and in the community .
Q: What were some of the takeaways from the summit that show how hospitals and healthcare systems can improve their digital healthcare equity?
A. Something to note is that in the conversations I’m a part of in this area, I really see Henry Ford Health taking the lead in investing in this work and supporting our patient population in digitally accessing their care. This event was a unique opportunity to bring parties from different domains together to engage in these conversations.
Leverage your communities: they know best and it is critical that they are part of the conversations as solutions are developed, otherwise you will miss a big and necessary perspective. There is also likely to be a lot of work already being done in the communities that enables partnerships. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.
Don’t just design solutions with the standard user in mind. Make sure solutions take into account the sometimes overlooked user (who can be difficult to use) and the overlooked user (who cannot use solutions at all).
And here’s some participant feedback that I included.
“Invest in education and communication, as well as provide human interaction, to give patients options to receive health care and encourage them on why one should seek medical checkups before major health problems occur.”
“Digital literacy is important and there is an urgent need to act on it now, before we face another catastrophe. One person can’t do everything. It takes a village.”
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