CapYear Cast - Andrea Lowe, MBA, MHA, PA-C

Andrea Lowe, MBA, MHA, PA-C, joins the CapYear Cast today to discuss the social determinants of health, namely health equality and equity. Andrea talks about the factors that enable health from the ground up and why simple waiting room questions can change the narrative. Andrea's 20-year experience spans boots-on-the-ground operations to hospital leadership, so she knows firsthand how important holistic thinking and PA/NP dynamics are to the overall patient experience. Definitely worth a listen - great stuff! Thanks for listening & subscribe for updates! Graduates (& soon to be graduates) - Get clinical experience and a paycheck! Create your FREE profile on https://capyear.co/ to find employers looking to hire pre-health graduates and current students. Plus you can find a growing number of clinical research positions. Applying to Medical or PA school? CapYear offers application support and career advice from physicians, PAs, and nurses to launch your career and make your application for MD/PA school stand out from the crowd. Providers - CapYear saves time and money by proactively sourcing applicants for your positions from a pool of diverse, college-educated talent looking for clinical positions to launch their careers. The future PAs, nurses, and physicians of America can fill many entry-level clinical positions, support your team and help deliver a great patient experience. Visit our job board, post a job, and let our team get to work for you today! https://jobs.capyear.co/ For more information on gap year placement, medical assistant hiring, or MD/PA school application support, please email us at [e-mail] https://capyear.co/ https://jobs.capyear.co/ Transcript below: CYC_Andrea_Lowe_v2_-_HD_1080p John Walkup: Hi, and welcome to the CapYear Cast. Today we're joined by rockstar Andrea Lowe. She is a physician assistant. She has a master's in health administration. She also has an MBA. Andrea, welcome to the show. Thank you for taking the time to be here. Why don't you tell our audience a little something about yourself? Andrea Lowe, MBA, MHA, PA-C: Well, first, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. As you said, I am a physician assistant (the title has physician associate). I have been practicing for 20 years in emergency medicine. I went into healthcare leadership and administration six years into my career. I've been a director of advanced practice providers, which are basically PAs and NPEs or APRNs, and then, I went in to be a vice president of operations and led hospital operations for six years before going to the American Academy of PAs, which is the PA membership site. So, I've had a lot of experience, and I actually was over medical assistants, scribes, physicians, as well as PAs and NPEs. So I know about the dynamics and how important those healthcare providers are to the whole patient experience. John: Great. Today we're going to be talking about health equity and equality and some of the things that factor into those and why they are so important. I'm going to give the floor to you, of course. Let's talk about health equity and equality. Andrea: I think it's important for all parts of the medical team to understand the importance of health equity and health equality. The first thing I always tell people is that you have to really understand the difference between the two. Health equality is really treating all patients the same. You're promoting fairness, but that really only works if everyone is sort of starting from the same place and needs the same help, which is not always the picture of our healthcare environment. So when we talk about health equity, it's really when all patients and communities have the same opportunity to obtain the highest level of health. But the thing is, it requires the recognition and foresight from everyone on the healthcare team as well as an intentional allocation of resources to help them reach those outcomes. So it's really giving everyone what they need to be successful. And so recognizing health inequities in that space are really the differences in health that are avoidable when you address health equity. John: Right. If you're not used to thinking about health in these sorts of terms, what are some of the things you could do to remind yourself of the difference on a daily basis? Andrea: So you know, especially as PAs and then with what you all are doing at CapYear with medical associates, we're usually the first encounter to the patient in their healthcare and continuum. So understanding things like the social determinants of health is so important. Understanding that barriers to access are very important to recognize. And understanding and treating the patient beyond the healthcare visit. So things as socioeconomic status, access to certain healthcare services, even neighborhood and level stressors, and access to nutritious foods. All of those things contribute to that patient's health and their medical conditions. ...