What is it?
The Health Equity Roadmap initiative is part of California’s broader health equity strategy, which is an ongoing, phased process to create a more equitable, person-centered Medi-Cal health care delivery system. DHCS’ goal is to ensure access to quality, equitable health care for underserved groups, particularly BIPOC communities.
Why do we need it?
In an equitable health system, everyone, regardless of race, background, gender, sexuality, or ability, has a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest levels of health. Health equity goes beyond access to health care; inequities across broader social and economic factors that drive health also play a major role. Unfortunately, people from underserved groups, particularly BIPOC communities, experience
higher rates of illness and death across a wide range of health conditions, reflecting longstanding structural and systemic inequities.
Despite achieving its
lowest uninsured rate in history in 2022, access to timely and quality care is still a barrier for many Californians, including California’s diverse Medi-Cal members. These gaps in accessibility can lead to delays in care, expensive and preventable emergency room visits, or even illness and disease. While Medi-Cal works to improve access to health care for underserved communities, we have more work ahead of us.
What have we done so far?
DHCS is committed to addressing equitable access to care. For example, DHCS’s CalAIM waiver is
transforming health care to create a more coordinated, person-centered, and equitable health system that works for all Californians. Examples of actions taken by Governor Newsom to advance health equity at DHCS include:
- Receiving the California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM) waiver from the federal government to transform Med-Cal to be a more equitable, coordinated, and person-centered health program, prioritizing prevention and addressing social drivers of health to better serve communities, many of whom historically have been under-resourced and faced structural racism in health care.
- Establishing the
Medi-Cal Member Advisory Committee to enhance member engagement.
- Creating a $700 million
primary care provider practice transformation program to advance health equity.
- Making Medi-Cal available to
all income-eligible people, regardless of immigration status.
- Eliminating the “asset test” requirement so only an individual’s income is considered when determining Medi-Cal eligibility.
- Prior to this change, certain items such as second homes and cars were considered when determining eligibility.
- Ending the test allows Californians to plan for their futures while still getting the care they need.
- Not requesting asset information from applicants or Medi-Cal members for purposes of estate recovery.
Read more about DHCS’ efforts to reduce health disparities.
What are your ideas?
The listening tour was a meaningful step in DHCS’ efforts to address health inequities. The information gleaned during the listening tour will inform the design of a final Health Equity Roadmap, which will lay out specific, actionable items to help California root out systematic racism and identify opportunities to eliminate health inequities and disparities.
We want to hear from you. If you have ideas to make Medi-Cal more equitable and accessible, please email us at:
healthequityroadmap@dhcs.ca.gov.
