TEDx
TEDX Talk: Taking Health Care to the Streets
The future of our healthcare system is being hotly debated in Washington, D.C….again. Whichever way the vote goes, the effects will reverberate throughout our communities. But, the challenges of delivering healthcare to all people, no matter where they live, will continue to burden governments, institutions, and people. We all know that the Affordable Care Act or the proposed “repeal and replace” alternatives are not the long term solutions. The problems go beyond a visit to an emergency room or your family doctor. If you are lucky enough to have insurance, you will continue to worry about the cost of that insurance. If you can’t afford insurance, you have even larger challenges. Organizations, Institutions, and governments are trying to figure out how to still provide care within these complex forces.
In 2014, Cheryl Whitaker, MD, co-founded NextLevel Health (NLH) because she believed, “…government-funded health care programs often fail to reach their intended beneficiaries.”
As she explains in her TEDx Talk description:
Heath care in underserved communities has poor results due to lack of access and engagement. To succeed, it’s necessary to innovate. What works? Borrowing a page from the community organizer’s playbook and hitting the streets, using care consultants who are from the community. They understand the conditions and the lifestyles that pertain to their community’s residents, and are armed with mobile technology and know-how that can make a difference. How do you assess a patient’s neighborhood? None of the 81 measures health plans use to measure performance do, yet studies show that social determinants are up to 50% of what impacts health and the care patients receive. This innovative for-profit health insurance company helps the underserved access and manage Medicaid services by borrowing a page from the community organizer’s playbook.
