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What Health Plans Should Know as Interoperability Continues to Change the Game for Healthcare

Interoperability has transformed every facet of the healthcare delivery system, creating new opportunities to improve outcomes, reduce costs, and improve efficiencies. It has also been the key to enabling healthcare technology solutions to achieve their full potential.

By gaining a deeper understanding of the origins, current status, and future potential of interoperability, health plans can seize the opportunity to implement modern and innovative care management integration capabilities that deliver results for digital payers.

Defining Interoperability

Interoperability in healthcare refers to the ability of various information systems, devices, and applications to access, exchange, integrate, and cooperatively use data in a coordinated manner, in order to provide timely and seamless portability of information and improve the health of people and populations around the world.

Interoperability is the basis on which healthcare providers are able to deliver coordinated and comprehensive care to patients by accessing and sharing critical patient data in real-time. It also enables health plans to streamline administrative processes and reduce costs. As the healthcare industry continues to evolve and adopt new technologies, interoperability will also become an increasingly vital aspect of healthcare delivery and management.

Why Interoperability Matters

Interoperability can have significant positive implications across the healthcare ecosystem. Key goals of seamless integration include:

1. Advancing care coordination: Interoperability facilitates the sharing of member health information between payers, providers and systems, enabling better coordination and collaboration among organizations and teams.
2. Improving outcomes: By providing care managers and healthcare providers with access to comprehensive and up-to-date patient information, interoperability can help care managers create effective care plans and improve patient outcomes.
3. Streamlining administrative processes: Interoperability can reduce administrative burden, support new payment models, and ease claims processing.
4. Reducing costs: Interoperability can help reduce errors, streamline processes, and save time, leading to overall cost savings for payers, healthcare organizations, and members.
5. Improve member satisfaction: By improving data exchange, members have greater access to health and claims information, improving satisfaction and engagement.

The Beginning: Unlock the Power of Health Data through Interoperability

The need for interoperability originated as healthcare providers embraced widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs). EHRs were intended to revolutionize the way healthcare was delivered, enabling better coordination of care, reducing medical errors, and improving patient outcomes. However, in practice, EHRs created silos of health data that were not easily shared between providers or patients. This lack of interoperability led to fragmentation of care, duplication of tests, and unnecessary healthcare costs.

Recognizing the need to address these issues, the 21st Century Cures Act mandated that healthcare providers make patient health information available to patients and other providers in a standardized format through open, secure, and standardized application programming interfaces (APIs). The Act also created new provisions for healthcare data privacy and security, ensuring that patient data is protected when it is shared between providers.

These interoperability standards were important for several reasons. First, they empowered patients to take control of their health information and share it with any provider they choose. This increases patient engagement and allows for more comprehensive and coordinated care. Second, the rules helped to break down the silos of health data that had developed, enabling providers to access complete patient records, reducing the risk of medical errors, and improving the quality of care.

Finally, the interoperability rules promoted innovation in healthcare by encouraging the development of new applications and tools that can use healthcare data to improve patient outcomes, reduce costs, and improve efficiencies. Interoperability continues to be a priority for health plans and organizations across the healthcare ecosystem.

New Regulation and Innovation: Key Drivers Influencing Interoperability Today

Today, new regulations and continued innovation are driving urgency for greater interoperability. For example, the CMS Proposed Rule: Advancing Interoperability and Improving Prior Authorization Processes will directly influence integration priorities for many health plans. The proposed rule updates some of the policies included in the Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule of 2020 and officially withdraws the December 2020 CMS Interoperability proposed rule. The objectives of the policy are to reduce the burden on both payers and providers, improve efficiencies, and advance patient access to health information. Some of the conditions take effect immediately, while others require implementation by 2026. Given the scope, it is important health plans to take action now and prepare their infrastructures for full implementation.

The proposed rule includes multiple requirements for payers that will directly influence their interoperability strategies:

Patient Access API: The rule proposes to require regulated payers to include information about patients’ prior authorization decisions to help patients better understand the process and contribution to their care. The proposed provision would also require impacted payers to report annual metrics to CMS about patient use of the Patient Access API.

Provider Access API: The rule proposes impacted payers build and maintain an API to share patient data with in-network providers where a treatment relationships exists with the patient.

Payer-to-Payer Data Exchange on FHIR: The rule proposes to require payers to exchange member data when a member changes health plans, with the member’s permission. The data elements include claims and encounter data, those identified in the USCDI version 1, and prior authorization requests and decisions – only if the patient opts in to data sharing.

Improving Prior Authorization Processes: The rule proposes a series of policies in an effort to improve the prior authorization process through greater efficiency and transparency.

The rule also outlines CMS’s recommended use of certain implementation guides for the APIs listed in the rule, but does not propose requiring their use.

The provisions outlined in the CMS proposed rule facilitate moving the industry toward more streamlined communication and better information exchange that can benefit members, payers, and providers. As organizations await the final ruling, there are steps that can be taken now to prepare:

1. Understand how the ruling will impact your health plan. Assess guidelines and determine which provisions will apply to your organization.
2. Evaluate your current data management processes. Is all member information available in a single source in order to create the full record required? If not, what changes need to be made to maintain a record for each member?
3. Evaluate your current interoperability strategy. How is member information exchanged between payers, providers, and patients today? How is prior authorization information managed and exchanged today? In what format are the data points being requested and can they easily be delivered via a Patient API or Provider API?
4. Assess resource availability. Who will be responsible for implementing the new standards? Who will be responsible for ensuring data is available to patients and providers within defined timeframes? What processes will need to change in order to accommodate the new standards?

Future State: Interoperability Considerations for Digital Payers

The proposed rule could be considered just the beginning for innovation in interoperability that will impact health plans moving forward. Rapidly evolving regulatory requirements, new payment models, rising consumer expectations, and new market opportunities will continue to drive payers to advance interoperability. The results promised by continual digital advancements across the healthcare ecosystem rely on seamless data exchange. In fact, interoperability can be considered a prerequisite for many health innovations.

Digital payers should consider their care management system’s ability to meet key requirements for modern and evolving integration criteria:

1. Exchange a variety of data types: Health plans should ensure their care management system can access, ingest, and exchange various data types across other systems with industry interoperability standards.
2. Support real-time data exchange: Informing decisions in a timely manner is critical when it comes to effective care management. Health plans should ensure care managers have real-time access to member information.
3. Work seamlessly with other systems and data sources: Care management systems function as the core orchestrator of member care. But the most effective care plans rely heavily on data from multiple sources to inform optimal care plans. In addition, care management systems must work in tandem with claims, payment integrity, and other administrative systems to streamline processes and reduce costs.

GuidingCare® enables digital payers to meet these modern interoperability needs, plan for future requirements, and support continued innovation. To learn more about how about creating a successful interoperability strategy with GuidingCare, visit the GuidingCare page on the HealthEdge website.

In recent years, Medica, a Minnesota-based non-profit health insurance provider, has experienced explosive growth. To keep up with its growth, Medica’s was using HealthEdge’s core administrative processing system (CAPS), HealthRules^® Payer, which had resulted in multiple instances of the system.

However, the growing complexity of the multiple configurations led to the need for a more efficient way to manage the HealthRules Payer infrastructure, and Medica turned to the experts within the HealthEdge team for guidance.

Medica faced two main challenges: Firstly, the company needed to create new efficiencies to help reduce complexities and administrative burdens associated with maintaining multiple HealthRules Payer environments, reducing the time spent on issue research and resolution, enabling faster system audits, and improving tracking of configuration changes to support more seamless configuration changes. Secondly, the company needed to maintain quality, reducing occurrences of early promotion of another user’s work related to multi-user risks of promoting someone else’s work and eliminating the risk of wiping out another user’s changes.

The outcome of this collaboration was the creation of HealthRules Promote, a web-based application that all HealthRules Payer customers can now use to manage complex configurations and multiple instances of the solution. Medica noted that the collaborative effort between the two teams resulted in a powerful solution that helped the company support more than 400 configuration projects in the past year.

HealthRules Promote provides insight into the complexities of HealthRules Payer configuration and ensures that all unique dependencies are considered prior to promoting the configuration to production. It also allows multiple users across multiple lines of business to control and understand which users’ configurations are ready for promotion and which ones have conflicting dependencies.

For Medica, HealthRules Promote provides delivers several meaningful benefits:

1. The solution saves time through configuration artifacts by removing the need to create and maintain exports, eliminating separate spreadsheets for tracking, and easily importing configuration sets to new environments in just a few clicks.
2. The solution allows the company to confidently migrate configurations without errors that ultimately cause problems in production.
3. The dependency-and-compare features of HealthRules Promote allow Medica to easily audit builds across environments and identify development changes over time that may be causing product issues.

To explore how HealthRules Promote can empower your organization with actionable insights into the complexities of your multiple HealthRules Payer configurations, visit the HealthRules Promote page on the HealthEdge website or email [email protected].

 

What is the Transparency in Coverage Rule?

Prior to July 1,2022, most consumers of health care services were unaware of how much they cost, including myself.  My primary concern was whether it was a covered service and how much the copay or coinsurance was going to be after the insurance company processed the claim.  It never occurred to me that some providers may be charging vastly different prices for the same services.  The reality is that providers do have different rates for the same services.  The Transparency in Coverage (sometimes referred to as TiC) rule allows consumers to know the cost of a covered item or service before receiving them.

Beginning 1/1/2023, the Transparency in Coverage rule required that health insurance companies provide their members with an online tool that allows them to compare pricing data between different providers for several hundred covered services.  According to the rule, consumers should have the ability to access all their covered services using this same tool to make price comparisons no later than 1/1/2024.

How has this rule impacted the way consumers access healthcare services?

For me, the availability of price comparison data for my healthcare services is used to help me understand my potential out-of-pocket costs before I schedule services.  Even more importantly, this new ruling enables me to know how much of the cost is my responsibility before receiving the Explanation of Benefits (EOB) from the health plan.  Gone are the days when I would receive a bill from a provider indicating that I was responsible for tens of thousands of dollars for services rendered.  And yes, this did happen to me several years ago.

Providing consumers with this level of detail about their healthcare costs allows us all to engage in a more consumer-driven experience.  We now have tools to help us decide which providers we want to use, and this empowers each of us to play an important role in controlling the cost of our healthcare services.  As the saying goes ‘Knowledge is Power’ and it most certainly applies in this case.

Compliance with the Transparency in Coverage Rule

The good news is that health plans are complying with the Transparency in Coverage (TiC) rule and successfully implementing data processes and software applications to support this rule. Of course, this rule will continue to be refined and the processes in the background within health plans will continue to improve and evolve.  In the end, we will all benefit from the Transparency in Coverage (TiC) ruling by better understanding what is covered by our health insurance as well as managing the expected financial responsibility of our health care services.

Operationalizing Transparency in Coverage (TiC)

Making provider price comparison data available for use in an online tool for consumers is a massive undertaking for any health plan.  The data needs to include rates used for all covered items and services by in-network providers.  In addition, the allowed amounts, and billed charges from their out of-of-network providers are required.  Typically, this data is spread over multiple systems within a health plan, and consolidating the data is no easy task.

HealthEdge offers a suite of products to enable health plans to consume and transform the data needed to comply with this regulation.  Specifically, we can support health plans in the following ways:

• Adhere to the CMS mandate by understanding the health plans needs and system customizations
• Provide data in the required format that includes data dictionary updates
• Allows on-demand and monthly rate updates per contract configurations
• Enables data files access via SFTP line so they can be used to generate comprehensive rate lists

Learn more about HealthEdge’s suite of products here.

In the CY 2023 Final Rule, CMS made several changes that directly impact plans offering Dual Eligible Special Needs Plan (D-SNP) programs, which are a type of Medicare Advantage (MA) plan that are designed specifically for individuals who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.

In general, the 2023 changes are intended to make the D-SNP population more attractive for providers, and therefore increase access to care for these beneficiaries. For payers, these changes are intended to increase clarification regarding different D-SNP programs and reduce the administrative burden of offering separate MA and D-SNP programs. However, many payers are concerned about the impact these changes will have on their bottom lines.

Here are four changes from the 2023 Final Rule that we believe deserve additional consideration.

1. Capturing Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) Data

The Final Rule requires D-SNPs to incorporate one or more questions in their standard health risk assessments (HRA) addressing beneficiary housing, food insecurities, and transportation. Acknowledging that many factors other than physical health go into a person’s ability to maintain their health, many physicians have already started collecting this type of information, which is commonly referred to as social determinants of health (SDoH). The goal of taking a more holistic view of a patient’s life, including psychological, functional, and environmental factors, is to increase the likelihood of better health outcomes and lower the total cost of care. Care management teams within many health plans are also on board with collecting SDoH data and are already using this data to tailor services beyond medical benefits to achieve optimal health outcomes. Some care management platforms, like GuidingCare^®, have already released capabilities within their platform that help health plans more systematically integrate SDOH into their care management programs.

2. Recalculation of the Maximum Out of Pocket (MOOP)

CMS also finalized changes to the way Medicare Advantage plans calculate MOOP, requiring plans to include all cost-sharing, including those paid by secondary payers, in the calculation of the beneficiary’s MOOP. Previously, MOOP was calculated only by the amount the enrollee had to contribute. The result? Beneficiaries are likely to reach MOOP faster, and health plans will have to pay 100% of the service costs sooner. Some industry experts believe this change will result in an additional $4B in costs to health plans, but the improvement in health outcomes and improved access to medical and non-medical care is projected to save $3B. Despite the pushback from health plans on this change, CMS proceeded with the implementation of this and made it effective June 1, 2023. The complexities and urgency of the implementation of this change is a perfect example of why health plans need a modern, highly flexible core administrative processing system (CAPS) like HealthRules^® Payer.

3. Enrollee Participation in Plan Governance

Medicare Advantage organizations offering a D-SNP must establish one or more enrollee advisory committees in each state to solicit direct input from beneficiaries on their experiences with the plan. Plans that operate D-SNPs in multiple states had to establish multiple committees, one for each state. Although these committees must have a representative sample of the population enrolled in this plan, very little direction was given about the committee meeting frequency, location, format and training.

4. Bringing Greater Definition to multiple Types of D-SNPs

Historically, the fully integrated dual eligible (FIDE) and highly integrated dual eligible (HIDE) SNP definitions have been confusing and inconsistent. Through this final rule, CMS is making changes to the definitions, which will support a greater understanding of the different types of D-SNPs, clarify beneficiary options, and improve integration. According to a National Law Review article, this means all FIDE SNPs, with the same legal entity holding the MA and Medicaid contract: 1) be capitated (with certain exceptions) for all Medicaid services, and 2) operate unified grievance and appeal processes. CMS also clarified the definition of HIDE SNPs requiring the plan to cover long-term services and supports, including i) community-based long-term services and supports and some days of coverage of nursing facility services during the plan year; or (ii) behavioral health services. For plan year 2025 and subsequent years, the FIDE and HIDE SNP must cover the entire service area for the dual eligible special needs plan. By helping health plans enroll the appropriate beneficiaries into the right categories and having the ability to create tiered or dual networks, HealthRules Payer enables health plans to quickly spin up whichever type of D-SNP program they believe would be most valuable for the communities they serve.

Turning Mandates into Advantages

While the only constant in government health plans, including D-SNP programs, is change, health plans with a highly configurable CAPS can turn mandates into competitive advantages. For example, health plans using HealthRules Payer now have the opportunity to pursue D-SNP populations with less IT and administrative burdens because the system can be configured to address the unique D-SNP requirements. Health plans don’t have to implement an entirely new system. Things like dual networks and tiered networks are completely configurable in HealthRules Payer. The business flexibility HealthRules Payer gives health plans is unmatched and dramatically lowers the cost of entry into new lines of business.

In addition, the requirement to capture additional data, such as SDoH, is another opportunity for health plans to convert mandates into competitive advantages. With modern data analytics and reporting solutions from HealthEdge, plans can easily turn data into actionable insights that can help drive improved member outcomes, higher HEDIS scores, and better Star ratings. For example, SDoH insights can help care management teams configure new non-medical services, like transportation or meal support, for certain populations. Utilization management data collected can be folded into benefit plan development, and even fed into payment integrity initiatives to minimize provider and member abrasion with more accurate payments.

Looking at the Whole Picture

When regulatory changes such as those mentioned above are put in place, health plans often make the mistake of just looking at the one part of their business that is directly impacted instead of taking an end-to-end approach to implementing the changes across their enterprise. That’s where the professional services team at HealthEdge can be a health plan’s biggest asset. With years of experience in helping government-related health plans properly configure their systems to support regulatory changes, the team knows how to guide health plans through all aspects of the business that may be impacted so that everything from enrollment to claims coming in and payment going out are aligned.

To learn more about how HealthEdge solutions help health plans turn mandates into advantages, visit www.healthedge.com or email [email protected].

Developing your Company Culture: 4 Key Principles 

Join us for a 4-part series that explores developing your company culture and taking your organization to the next level.

1. A Culture of Impactful Leadership
2. Continuous Development – The Path to Employee Engagement & Retention
3. 5 Simple Steps to Foster Inclusion & Diversity
4. 6 Secrets to Purposeful Collaboration & Equitable Experiences

Part 4: Hybrid Work – 6 Secrets to Purposeful Collaboration & Equitable Experiences

With some employees at home, some at the office, and some a hybrid of the two – creating and fostering a company culture that feels genuine can be elusive. And in the aftermath of the pandemic, and several years into widespread remote work, this hybrid lifestyle is a reality that’s here to stay.

There are many positives to the hybrid work environment. Employees have embraced the flexibility of working remotely and leaning into a schedule that allows them to maximize their personal schedule, productivity, and energy. But there are also challenges: Zoom fatigue, the mental exhaustion from back-to-back meetings on screens all day, and the dissipation of company culture are a few of the big concerns. Working from home makes it hard for employees to feel connected to the bigger picture, team, and company.

With hybrid work being the new normal, how do we maximize the effectiveness of this model & use it to our advantage?

1. Make the Office a Magnet, Not a Mandate

Fear has driven some companies to mandate employees’ return to the office. But why make your employees pay for the cost and time of a commute if they’re going to be doing the same work from the office as their house?

What could your company offer that makes the office a magnet? It could be offering free lunches, opportunities for collaboration, or a welcoming, comfortable work environment.

The key is to make returning to the office – even for a few days a week – enticing to your employees.

2. Foster Purposeful Collaboration

At HealthEdge, we are consciously fostering a culture of purposeful collaboration – where if employees are invited to come to the office, we provide a solid WHY behind that request. This could be creating connections, brainstorming/solving problems, celebrating, socializing, and/or building relationships. We want to encourage employes to get together when it makes sense – to solve a business need or to gather to form stronger bonds & relationships.

We also host ‘Collaboration Weeks.’ These purposeful weeks are designed to bring people local to the office together. The week includes community service, social activities, panel discussions, and more. They’re designed to get our people together to interact through different events. However, it’s critical to make remote employees feel included as well. We offer all the sessions virtually so any employee can join. The experiences of on-site, hybrid, and remote employees must be equitable.

3. Educate & Empower your Managers

Senior leaders are in the best position to both define and role model the desired company culture and connect employees to that culture. However, managers are in the best position to help connect their teams to the work and to why what they’re doing is important – linking back to the purpose of the company.

Educate your managers on:

• How to have successful remote meetings
• How to have successful 1:1 meetings
• How to assess performance in the hybrid world

Empower your managers to develop the right schedule & collaboration strategy for their teams. Rather than an Executive leader making a bold statement like, everyone must be at the office 3 days a week! Empower your managers, who know the composition of their teams & the individual members, to determine what the hybrid work model looks like to make the strongest connections and reap the highest levels of productivity.

4. Minimize Remote Meeting Fatigue

Staring at a screen all day, switching from meeting to meeting, is draining and has proven to be mentally exhausting for employees. Encourage your employees to turn their screens off and walk around during meetings where they just need to listen. Make it a norm for employees to block time off on their calendar for lunch and breaks in the morning/afternoon. With remote work, it’s easy to spend a whole day glued to your screen and desk chair – a surefire recipe for burnout and disengagement. Actively tell your employees to take breaks and get away from their screens. Without this active encouragement, it’s easy for remote employees to fall into the trap of feeling guilty when they aren’t immediately available via Slack/email. Managers can play a huge role here by role modeling this behavior.

Companies can also provide equipment/stipends that encourage movement throughout the day. This could include things like standing desks or under-desk walking pads. Companies can also encourage walking challenges with fun prizes to get employees moving.

5. Establish Meeting/Deep Work Norms

When you work in an office next to your neighbor, you can see when they have their headphones on and are deep in work. However, when you’re working remotely, you can’t see that – all you can experience is an unanswered Slack and wondering why your coworker isn’t responding.

Furthermore, when you work in an office, you get up from your desk and go to a meeting room. Then you get up and walk around after the meeting. When you work remotely, it’s easy to go from back-to-back meetings and never get up from your desk.

This is why it’s critical for managers to establish deep work, response, and meeting norms for their team. For example:

• Deep work: managers can actively support their employees to set the time and space for deep work each day/week. This can be as simple as encouraging employees to set their status as away so they have the time and space to focus. Managers could also establish deep work blocks of time – such as a 3-hour window on Wednesday mornings with no meetings.
• Response times: Managers can support their employees by setting expectations for response times for email and Slack/teams messages.
• Meeting norms: Managers can mandate that meetings be a maximum of 25 or 55 minutes, so employees have a chance to get up and move around throughout the day.

6. Lean into Synchronous/Asynchronous Work

Synchronous work is normal – we talk, we meet, we Slack – all in real time. But with remote work, there’s the opportunity for asynchronous work, which enables team members to work when and how they’re most productive.

For this to be successful, managers need to be empowered to establish the cultural norms for their team. These cultural “rules” can include how the team can expect to work together in an asynchronous fashion. For example, Slack response time expectations. The “rules” could include:

• When to use Slack versus email
• When Slack is to be checked (every time it dings or at set times like morning, noon, and end of day)
• What to put in Slack versus email

The Future of Hybrid Work

With remote and hybrid work, employees, especially highly performing ones, have more choice of employers than ever. Creating a hybrid culture of purposeful collaboration, equitable experiences, and flexibility is critical to engaging and retaining employees long term.

Learn more about life at HealthEdge here.

Developing your Company Culture: 4 Key Principles 

Join us for a 4-part series that explores developing your company culture and taking your organization to the next level.

1. A Culture of Impactful Leadership
2. Continuous Development – The Path to Employee Engagement & Retention
3. 5 Simple Steps to Foster Inclusion & Diversity
4. 6 Secrets to Purposeful Collaboration & Equitable Experiences – Coming soon!

Part 3: 5 Simple Steps to Foster Inclusion & Diversity

The business case for committing to diversity & inclusion is compelling. It has been shown that companies with above-average diversity produced a greater proportion of revenue from innovation (45% of total) than from companies with below average diversity (26%). This innovation-related advantage also translates into overall better financial performance. It follows that with the workforce becoming increasingly diverse across all categories, 57% of workers believe that employers should be doing more to increase workplace diversity. A study by McKinsey demonstrated that gender and ethnic diversity are clearly correlated with profitability.

Furthermore, when you bring people with diverse backgrounds together, it drives innovation. Instead of collaborating with a team of homogenous people – all with the same education, thinking, and background – the diversity of circumstances, ideas, and perspectives leads to enhanced problem solving and advancements in innovation.

When you diversify your employee base, your company culture benefits from the wealth of those perspectives, experiences, and approaches to problem solving. Diverse backgrounds include gender and ethnicity, but also age & generation, gender & gender identity, sexual orientation, religion & spiritual beliefs, disability, education, and socioeconomic status & background.

Diversity is a powerful force to drive revenue and profitability. Here’s how you can foster diversity in your organization.

Simple Solutions to Foster Diversity

1. Offer Diverse Benefits

Organizations can foster a welcoming environment to diversity by offering benefits that are inclusive. Employers should address the gaps and disparities in benefit plan offerings to optimize the health, productivity, well-being, and financial protection of underrepresented groups. This might mean providing benefits that don’t just cater to a heterosexual married couple with two kids. Building an inclusive benefits package shows employees, and prospective employees, that the company isn’t just talking about DEI – it’s taking action, making investments, and enacting changes.

The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts at HealthEdge have led to a conscious decision this year to enhance our US benefits package with more inclusive offerings. This includes things like infertility services, gender affirming services, travel & lodging reimbursement to ensure employees have access to covered women’s health services, and an increased parental bonding leave policy from 4 weeks to 14 weeks for birth and adoptive parents.

2. Seek talent with diverse backgrounds

Understand the current composition of your workforce – look at it by type, role, and function. Determine how you can diversify, and how you can attract/appeal to different candidate pools. Make it a goal to have a diverse pool of candidates to pull from. A hybrid/virtual workforce can help with this – when you expand your geographic boundary for hiring you get a broader pool of diverse candidates.

3. Educate your hiring managers

Hiring diverse candidates can take a little longer – which is why it’s crucial to educate your hiring managers on why diverse candidates are so important. Help them understand the business case for hiring diverse candidates and why it’s worth the investment in time and effort.

4. Foster an Environment of Inclusion & Belonging

It’s critical to create a work environment where people feel like they can bring their most authentic self and highest potential to work. What good is it to hire for diversity if your employees don’t feel like they can be themselves – where the work environment doesn’t support diversity. This is where inclusion and belonging come into play. Create an environment that fosters and welcomes diversity.

5. Internal Inclusion Best Practices

There are many ways to make diverse employees feel included in the organization:

• Create a community for them to be a part of. At HealthEdge, we have an iBelong group that seeks to include employees throughout the organization with ongoing virtual chats and a monthly event. Events serve to provide awareness and education in an interesting and engaging way.  The community also offers a safe space to seek support and discuss challenging topics.
• Educate managers on how to make employees feel welcome within their group. For example, recognize there are introverts and extroverts in our Zoom meetings. A simple technique during meetings is to present a topic and give everyone a minute to think about it before soliciting a response. Another is to go around the table during a discussion and give everyone a chance to contribute – not just the most loquacious extroverts.
• Encourage managers to build 1:1 relationship with their team members to build trust and provide support throughout their career journey.

Diversity & inclusion is a powerful way to increase revenue, profitability, and innovation. Learn more about HealthEdge’s culture of belonging here.