Achieving Health Equity: Overcoming Bias & Empowering Patient Advocacy

Are you tired of feeling powerless in the doctor's office? Discover how to be your own advocate and champion health equity to overcome cultural bias in your medical records. Show Notes | Transcript "When the person is referred to as non-compliant, what it tells you is that the person is not following directions... And if you write non-compliant in the medical records two or three times, that person is not going to help us." - Dr. Mauvareen Beverley In this raw and insightful conversation, Dr. Mauvareen Beverley, patient engagement expert and author of "Nine Simple Solutions to Achieve Health Equity," pulls back the curtain on the unconscious biases and systemic barriers impacting care for women and minority communities. Through eye-opening anecdotes spanning her 20-year tenure as an executive-level physician, you'll bear witness to the transformative impact of asking "why" instead of making assumptions. You'll emerge with the tools to: Advocate for a comprehensive social history in your medical records beyond reductive labels like "non-drinker, non-smoker" Understand the deep-rooted fears that can fuel "non-compliance" and learn the "SPOT Methodology" for addressing these concerns Reframe your perspective to recognize the "common thread" uniting all human experiences with illness, transcending societal divides Discover powerful strategies for communicating your needs without feeling dismissed or judged during medical appointments Resources: Join the Soulful Women's Network Connect with Dr. Mauvareen Beverley: Website: drbeverley.com Book: 9 Simple Solutions to Achieve Health Equity: A Guide for Healthcare Professionals and Patients Email: mbeverleymd(at)gmail.com Phone: (914) 409-2767 Women in Podcasting Awards Live. Love. Engage. has been nominated for a Women in Podcasting Award in the Mindset category. Voting is open between August 1 - October 1, 2024. We'd love your vote! Go here to express your support: womeninpodcasting.net/live-love-engage Thank you! Connect with Live Love Engage: Send Gloria Grace a message ☕ Support the podcast ❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating LinkedIn: Gloria Grace Rand Facebook: Gloria Grace Rand YouTube: Gloria Grace Rand TRANSCRIPT Gloria “Grace” Rand Namaste. Did you know that unconscious and unconscious bias, I should say, and non compliance can have a life or death impact in a healthcare environment, especially for women and minority communities? So the author of nine simple Solutions to achieve Health Equity, a guide for physicians and patients, is going to be joining us today to talk about how to advocate for yourself and loved ones in patient care. But before I bring her on, I would like to welcome those of you who are new to live, love, engage, and introduce myself. I am Gloria Grace. I help female entrepreneurs attract more clients with calm, clarity and confidence by releasing negative thought patterns like self doubt and poor self worth. And I am really looking forward to this conversation today with Doctor Mauvareen Beverley as my guest. And I apologize if I pronounced her name wrong because I was going over it before we started, but hopefully I got it right. But I'm going to bring her on shortly. But in addition to being an author, she is a patient engagement and cultural competence specialist with 20 years of experience as an executive level physician. So I'm going to, without further ado, welcome, doctor Beverley, to live love, engagement. Welcome. Dr. Mauvareen Beverley Thank you so much, Gloria. I'm honored to be here with you. And you did pronounce my name correctly. Gloria “Grace” Rand I'm good. Thank goodness. Okay. I wasn't sure. It looks easy, and yet somehow my mind is wanting to trip over it. But I'm going to get right into talking about bias and health disparities that show up for women and minorities. And I'm wondering if you could share with our listeners and our audience on YouTube, what does that look like in practical terms? Maybe you can give some examples of that. Dr. Mauvareen Beverley I think unconscious bias, obviously, is a stereotype about particular groups of individuals, and it does not address the reality of who that person is, necessarily. And what I find the relationship. One of the common relationships in medicine is the word noncompliance. And so now there's a nice word, non adherent. And when the person is referred to as non compliant, what it tells you is that the person is not following directions and not following any instructions that's given. And if you write non compliant in the medical records two or three times, that person is not going to help us. And it's been proven that negativity in the medical records is geared worse towards African Americans, particularly african american male. And when you write non compliant, there's never a why question that's included. So we don't know why a patient didn't follow directions, but we are going to write non compliant. And I'll give you an example how the unconscious buyer. And the word non compliant was addressed in a particular patient. And so at Kings County Hospital, I was in charge of the congestive heart failure readmission prevention program. And when Medicare came in and said, if you take, if you. I'm sorry, if you are readmitted in 30 days with only pay for one admission, whereas prior to that they would pay for 24, 68, ten admission. So here's an example of the non compliant and how we saved a life when we asked the why questions and eliminated the unconscious bias. 60 year old african american male, recenter diagnosed with congestive heart failure, returns. Two weeks later, congestive heart failure decompensated due to non compliance. My team had to ask why, and they referred to me as doctor B. They said, please, we have to ask why? Because doctor B is going to bug out if we don't x why? So we asked the patient, why didn't you take your medication? I can't take the water pill, which is another word for diuretic that flushes out the body so that the heart pump better. And the problem is it makes the person urinate a lot. So we asked him, why can't you take the water pill? And I'm glad you're sitting down, glory. Because his answer was, because I drive the number seven train. Oh, so when the train is delayed because the driver has to find a bathroom. Yes. When you see a shift, 11:00 p.m. to 11:00 a.m. what do you do when you get home? I do some chores. I make breakfast. I take some of my medications. But if I'm going on my shift, I don't take the water pill. We brought this to the attention of the cardiologist, the same cardiologist who was ignoring him. And he said, okay, take the water pill. When you get home, be aware, it may wake you up during the day, but by the time you get to your ship, you'll have less of a reason to urinate. And to the degree that you do, we're going to give you a cubicle to use in the private space. You know what the patient's response was? If I knew I had to choose between peeing and breathing, I was, yeah, I think so. Conversation. So, you know, without the why question, he would have been readmitted multiple times and who's going to care about him? And if he were to pass at mortality, it would have said died due to non compliance. But the key takeaway from this particular case, the patient. We made it such that the patient didn't have to choose between his job and his health, but also that we recognize him as a human being, and we needed to know why he couldn't follow direction. And in my experience, asking the why question resulted in a lot of better health outcomes. Did it solve all the problems? No, but it solved a large percentage of what would have been, could be mortality. Gloria “Grace” Rand Yeah, absolutely. I can understand that because I can also understand it from the point of view of the patient and his not wanting to do that. And I guess there's the. One of the issues is that we really do need to not be afraid of speaking up to healthcare providers and to ask questions. And I suppose he may have thought that, but maybe he didn't feel comfortable even enough to ask. I'm so glad that you were advocate, but I guess that's why you kind of wrote the book. Tell me a little bit about that. Is that one of the reasons about that? Dr. Mauvareen Beverley And it's what I refer to in my book as stopping my tracks moments that led to boots on the ground, simple solution. And the stopping my tracks moments came from speaking to patients and recognizing that currently in. In healthcare, and also the topic of health disparity and everything now is nicer word. Now there's health equity. The patients are not included in the solution. And in my book, the stop in my tracks moments came from patients that actually led to boots on the ground, simple solution. And it was humbling. And what I realized is that obviously, heart failure is age related. Most of the cohort of patients were between 60 and 92. And what I realized is that the english speaking african american population is not included in the cultural competence conversation. The elderly black population had the worst health outcomes in all disease categories. When you consider the atrocities that they endured, it's unacceptable. And again, one of my stopping my tracks moments went into see a patient in Brooklyn, is what I call the merging of the african diaspora was a large caribbean population. There's a large African American. And the spanish population were interested. They weren't from Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico or Mexico. There were Panamanians under colonial rule. The British sent the english speaking population to Panama. To do what? To build a canal. So they have English and spanish name Ronaldo Austin, Antonio Martin. And typically they look black. And the top language was English. And the bulk of the patients that were African American came from the Carolinas....