Evaluating racial concordance in a telephonic care management program among Black patients

To examine whether racial concordance between telephonic care managers and Medicare Advantage beneficiaries engaged in a care management program influenced the likelihood of fulfilling a set of identified health care needs.

Retrospective study of a real-world telephonic care management program among Medicare Advantage beneficiaries.

This study involved Medicare Advantage beneficiaries identified as having at least 1 of 23 gaps in care quality at baseline who were randomly assigned to a telephonic care management program between June 2020 and March 2021. We examined participating Black beneficiaries and assigned racial concordance based on engaging with a Black (race-concordant) or White (race-discordant) care manager. The primary outcome was a measure of whether the gap in care was closed at 90 days. We used logistic regression models adjusted for beneficiary characteristics to examine the impact of racial concordance on binary measures of gap closure at the individual and gap levels.

Among the study population of 12,636 Black race beneficiaries, 1291 (10.2%) had a race-concordant care manager and 11,345 (89.8%) had a race-discordant care manager. In adjusted models, beneficiary-care manager racial concordance did not impact closure of gaps in care when examined at the beneficiary level (OR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.90-1.08) or the gap level (OR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.88-1.12).

In a real-world telephonic care management program aiming to resolve gaps in care quality, beneficiary-care manager racial concordance did not impact the rate of resolving gaps in care for Black beneficiaries.