As COVID-19 swept through our communities, it left a trail of destruction and loss — loss of lives, loss of stability and loss of security. The pandemic affected everyone, but it quickly became apparent that women were bearing a disproportionate share of the burden.
A year into the pandemic, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey revealed that almost half (47%) of working mothers had to take unpaid leave due to school or daycare closures. For working mothers with low incomes, the number soared to 65%. And 1 in 10 women had to leave their jobs altogether for pandemic-related reasons. It’s a truth of the pandemic that women have faced significant economic challenges.
Here’s another pandemic truth: The world has found ways to accelerate technology projects to continue delivery of critical services. In fact, more processes have been digitized during the pandemic than ever before.
As the public health emergency (PHE) unwinds, it’s important to continue using technology to lift up women and reduce health inequities.
Calming the chaos of Medicaid coverage loss
During the course of the PHE, Medicaid recipients were allowed to stay continuously enrolled, which provided much-needed support to families hit hard by the pandemic. But as the PHE unwinds, states are now redetermining eligibility, and millions of recipients will soon lose coverage.
Some families no longer qualify for benefits. Many more, however, still qualify but might lose coverage anyway. Some might be disenrolled for an administrative reason, such as not completing a new application form. Others will be disenrolled by error.
At this time of redeterminations, it’s important that no one slips through the cracks. A recipient who no longer qualifies for Medicaid might instead qualify for coverage through another program. And people who are still Medicaid-eligible might also benefit from additional programs.
Streamlining insurance eligibility and enrollment
In most states, recipients must navigate between different agencies to apply for Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). States are currently focused on redetermination, but there is also a need and opportunity to centralize eligibility and enrollment processes. Investing in a foundational change now could ease the future burden on people in need.
Streamlining the enrollment process will necessitate the integration of disparate systems and data sources. To qualify women for WIC, for example, states could use the information that already exists in their Medicaid or SNAP systems. If women are already enrolled in those programs, states know they meet the WIC income eligibility requirements. States could also use Medicaid claims data on a new birth to trigger a benefits evaluation so that the family receives WIC benefits for the new child.
Addressing social determinants of health
When a variety of data is integrated, states can take a holistic view of an individual and consider all the factors that affect their lives. This whole-person view includes exploring social determinants of health (SDOH) — the non-medical factors that influence a person’s well-being.
WIC was created to address one of these factors, food security. But what other obstacles are keeping women and children from fully benefiting from WIC? Are there better ways for WIC to deliver services? And what role can technology play?
The federal government has made funding available to help states take their WIC programs to the next level. Taking advantage of these new opportunities will go a long way toward modernizing delivery of benefits and making WIC more accessible. Introducing online shopping apps will address the factors that might be creating barriers to food shopping, such as work schedules or transportation. And finding new ways to leverage tap-to-pay technology could give recipients access to healthier options by enabling them to shop at farmer’s markets as easily as they could at grocery stores.
Transforming for a more equitable future
COVID shone a spotlight on health inequities, but it also showed that states can rise to meet the challenge with compassion and creativity. During the unwinding, states have been working to automate as many processes as possible, but this is also an opportunity to look beyond redetermination.
The pandemic significantly impacted lives. But it can also be a catalyst for accelerating the use of technology to affect lives for the better.
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