Turning action into equity
"We believe that everyone should have access to high-quality, affordable health care, and we believe the time to act is now. We view this work as a critical part of our decades-long focus on providing quality care to our members."
Sarah Iselin
President and Chief Executive Officer
See problems. Share solutions. Make change.
In partnership with our members, our clients, our business partners, community organizations, and the medical community, we’re working to create a better health care system for everyone.
Equity and care
We’re teaming up with the providers in our network to ensure equity in care. We’re building this commitment into our contracts and payment programs, and we’re collaborating with community members and experts in health equity to develop innovative new solutions.
Equity and access
We’ve stepped up our efforts to ensure better access for all, including:
- Making our website available in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russian
- Working with all of our business partners to ensure that they’re measuring the equity of the services they provide and addressing any disparities in care
- Launching a Spanish-language version of MyBlue, our member account site, and Coverage, our health news site
Equity: How you can help
Our members can help improve our health care system by confidentially sharing race, ethnicity, and language preferences.
Equity and employer partners
We know our customers want all their employees to receive quality, affordable health care, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or neighborhood. We’re making the insights from our Health Equity Report available to employers and supporting them in implementing best-in-class practices.
Continued support to providers in 2025 and beyond
We’re excited about the growth of our Equity Action Community (EAC). The EAC focuses on identifying and spreading interventions that improve the equity of care that our members receive, with an emphasis on hypertension, diabetes, cancer screenings, and pediatric wellness. We’re thrilled to be continuing our support across provider groups in the EAC including small group providers, virtual provider groups, and large group providers like Mass General Brigham, Beth Israel Lahey Health, Tufts Medical Center, Revere Medical and Boston Medical Center.
We’re also happy to report that we have two newer groups participating in the pay-for-equity incentive program in 2024, Boston Children’s Hospital and Atrius Health. Boston Children’s Hospital is the first pediatric hospital in the nation to participate in a pay-for-equity financial payment model. These two health systems join the five other large heath care systems who participate in our groundbreaking model to promote high quality and equitable care for all members we serve.
See the data
Our Health Equity Report examines data from more than 1.4 million commercial Massachusetts members and identifies racial disparities in care. In line with our commitment to transparency, we make this data available to the public. And, in partnership with the medical community, we’re using it to make meaningful change.
Expanding equity in our community
Here’s what we’re doing to help make a lasting, sustainable impact on our community:
- Investing in organizations that are advancing health justice.
- Helping entrepreneurs build innovative health care solutions through our Business Accelerator.
- Supporting the Health Equity Compact.
- Advancing economic opportunities through our Supplier Inclusion Program.
Inclusivity. It’s how we work.
To ensure that all our employees feel respected, included, and empowered to contribute, we’re committed to:
- Recruiting, retaining and promoting employees with a wide range of unique talents, experiences and perspectives.
- Leveraging our training programs to share best practices and reinforce the importance of inclusive leadership.
- Fostering a company culture where every voice is welcomed, heard, and valued.
- Honoring and celebrating each other's histories and cultures through employee resource groups.
Magnolia Model tm
At Blue Cross, we show up for everyone like they’re the only one by guiding our members to the exceptional health care they deserve. Affordably. Equitably. Seamlessly.
To support our work, we developed the Magnolia Model™, a data-driven framework that organizations can use to understand complex health inequities and develop innovative solutions to address them. It is an interactive tool supporting our ability to systematically address inequities identified in equity audits. The objective of the Magnolia Model is to identify, test and implement effective interventions to close health equity gaps.
Why the magnolia tree?
Magnolias are a symbol of dignity and presents promise for light, hope, growth, and ultimately rebirth. As we worked to develop this model, dignity was the most common theme we heard when interviewing community members focused on reducing inequities. Too often, groups that have been historically marginalized or made vulnerable experience a lack of dignity in health care, a reality that impacts a wide range of outcomes.
Magnolia trees produce flowers with overlapping petals; this symbolizes the interconnectedness of health equity topics. Data is critical to the Magnolia Model approach. We are working to break down barriers, but before we can do that, we must understand them. And to understand them, we need reliable data to improve our measurement. We aim to apply this model to identify health inequities and develop programs to reduce them overtime. When we work together to address inequities, we can create a healthier, more dignified, more equitable society.
The Magnolia Model™, draws inspiration from many sources, including structured interviews with health equity experts and liaisons to affected communities, our own health equity guiding principles, human-centered design, and seminal scholarship from the health policy domain. Catalano, R., Pickett, K. E., Albrecht, G., Fitzpatrick, R., & Scrimshaw, S. (2000). Handbook of Social Studies in Health and Medicine. See section 3.8: “An Expanded Conceptual Framework of Equity: Implications for Assessing Health Policy,” by Lu Ann Aday.
Beginning in January 2023, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts has engaged health care provider organizations value-based contracts that incorporate financial incentives to measurably improve health equity. More information on these pay-for-equity contracts is available here and here, and technical details of the methods underlying the pay-for-equity contract design are available here.