Promoting Equity & Quality in New York’s Public Insurance Programs
May 2009
A new report issued by the Community Service Society of New York (CSS) and funded by the New York State Health Foundation (NYSHealth) urges New York State to promote health equity more effectively through its popular public insurance programs. These programs—Child Health Plus, Family Health Plus and Medicaid Managed Care—serve nearly 3 million New Yorkers, approximately 30% of whom are African American, and another 37% are Latino.
CSS’s report makes three policy recommendations about how New York State could better improve the quality of care for racial and ethnic minorities: (1) the State should monitor health plan quality indicators by racial and ethnic categories; (2) the State should publicly disclose the results of racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes by health plan; and (3) the state should leverage its purchasing power for health equity through its existing pay-for-performance and monitoring mechanisms. This report is the first in a two-part series on racial and ethnic disparities in health.
Please click here to read the full report.