The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has created a new accountable care organization (ACO) program, known as ACO Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health (REACH). The program represents an effort to better reflect CMS’s goals of achieving equitable outcomes through improving quality of care and focusing on patients in underserved communities. Addressing health inequities is a place where providers may have a large learning curve with regards to data analysis, so in this paper, we discuss:
- Background on health equity
- Guidance on the health equity plan for REACH ACOs
- Two examples of simple health equity data analyses