Dr. Rodney Hood: Offering a powerful prescription for the neediest patients and the healthcare system

Data-driven hot spotting can help eliminate racial, ethnic health disparities

The Affordable Healthcare Act may have improved access to health care but some races and ethnicities continue to experience implicit bias, structural barriers, and poorer health outcomes than other groups. In this month’s Pulse podcast, Dr. Rodney Hood, a board-certified internist and the managing director of CareView Medical Group in San Diego, shares his career path, research, and community health initiatives that dramatically improve patient outcomes while saving health care systems millions of dollars.

“Looking at life expectancy, we know that the average adult lives 78 years,” says Dr. Hood. “But when we delve deeper, we find that Asians have the longest life expectancy, Hispanics next longest, whites then natives, and African Americans have the shortest.” Dr. Hood has devoted his career to serving multicultural and under-served patients in Southeast San Diego and to getting clinicians, nurses, health workers, and administrators into the community where they can better understand and meet the needs of diverse patients.

In the podcast, he shares the results of research conducted with a prestigious grant from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, “hot-spotting” in at-risk communities with need-based interventions. Serving 60 patients over three years, the interventions saved the health care system saved $4 million dollars and the physician group $200,000.

Dr. Hood and the Multicultural Health Foundation he cofounded continue to partner with for-profit health care systems to demonstrate the model’s potential savings, a portion of which he advocates setting aside for “wellness initiatives.”

Listen in as Dr. Hood gives insight into the challenges facing his patients and some innovative strategies for improving patient care.

To listen to previous episodes of the Pulse, visit our archives page on UCTV’s Career Channel.