Health orgs still committed to closing health disparities

The shifting language of health equity

This report speaks to one of the medical industry's focuses in the past five years: promoting health outcomes across all patient populations.

But while industry experts previously referred to these efforts as health equity, the report takes a different tone that emphasizes health outcomes. After all, clinical quality improvement is not possible without looking at clinical quality and outcomes data and making improvements for all demographics.

The EY experts acknowledged this change in verbiage, stating that discussing "health outcomes optimization" more accurately gets to the heart of the industry's focus.

"While this work has been described using many terms, including health equity, we see an opportunity to recast it under the ultimate and inclusive goals of optimal health for all, health outcomes optimization and closing health outcome gaps," the authors wrote at the start of the report.

"This shift aims to drive focus on the shared objectives that unite the health care industry: addressing areas of greatest need, investing in areas of greatest impact and sharing best practices."

Indeed, healthcare organizations are keen on supporting health outcomes optimization, even as the political and policy landscape shifts away from health equity or DEI in healthcare.

Health leaders eye health outcomes successes

Although health industry leaders think their organizations will maintain their current emphasis on health outcomes optimization, the extent to which they'll prioritize varies by organization type.

For example, about three-quarters of public sector organizations said they'd increase their efforts to promote health outcomes for all in both the 2024 and 2025 iterations of this report, EY said. However, there was a notable drop in the number of private sector organizations saying they'd increase their efforts to promote health outcomes for all between 2024 and 2025 (70% and 43%, respectively).

What's more, provider organizations proved among the most likely to say they are reducing their health outcomes optimization efforts due to the external environment, with physician groups, in particular, saying this.

Nearly two-thirds (62%) of physician group respondents said they anticipated their organization would deprioritize health outcomes optimization this year, despite them seeing the most positive impact from these efforts in the past among their health system and hospital peers.

The EY authors indicated that stakeholder education will be critical in this area. Across the board, respondents said they were stymied by a lack of staff understanding of what "optimizing health for all" truly means.

Still, there's overall health and life sciences industry momentum stressing the importance of health outcomes optimization, potentially because those efforts have served stakeholders well thus far. As of present, efforts in health outcomes optimization yielding better health outcomes for 85% of respondents and better finances for 75% of respondents.

Stakeholders narrow focus on healthcare access, affordability

As healthcare organizations maintain their emphasis on health outcomes optimization, they are narrowing their focus toward more targeted efforts.

For example, 62% of healthcare organizations are reducing their investments in at least one aspect of health outcomes optimization, which EY said likely signals they are narrowing their focus based on need or impact.

The most common investments focus on implementing initiatives tailored for health outcomes optimization and building internal capabilities. About a fifth of organizations are reducing their investment in internal team development, ecosystem partnerships and philanthropy.

Additionally, focus on non-medical factors is starting to wane, as healthcare organizations target healthcare access and quality (56%) and affordability (34%) as levers to drive health outcomes for all.

Respondents reported less emphasis on employee inclusivity or belonging; data, AI and technology; social and community context; education access and quality and economic stability and inclusion this year.

Leaders must fortify data analytics efforts

In order to improve health outcomes, organizations must be able to track and measure key metrics. However, respondents indicated that their organizations are at a standstill in their data collection methods.

From 2023 until 2025, about a third of healthcare organizations were using analytics to stratify information data and flag outcome gaps. Another third of organizations have been using data to inform their strategic priorities in 2025, but few (12%) are using data and analytics to drive improvement activities.

Healthcare organizations are mostly collecting data on the social drivers of health and race, ethnicity and language, with about three-quarters of organizations saying they collect data in those areas. Around half of organizations report clinical outcomes by subpopulation or collect sexual orientation and gender identity data.

"A well-defined health optimization strategy that bridges the gap between awareness and implementation can bring a business case to life," Garfield concluded. "This strategy includes data analytics, workforce capabilities and community engagement working together to reach the value drivers that ultimately help everyone."

Sara Heath has covered news related to patient engagement and health equity since 2015.