Resource Location: https://www.chcs.org/media/Using-Data-to-Reduce-Disparities-2021_Final.pdf
Advancing Health Equity (AHE)
Unless specifically measured, disparities in health and healthcare can go unnoticed even as providers, health plans, and governmental organizations (hereafter referred to as healthcare organizations) seek to improve care. Stratifying quality data by patient race, ethnicity, language and other
demographic variables such as age, sex, health literacy, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic status, and geography is an important tool for uncovering and responding to healthcare disparities. This brief is organized into these three topics and recommends strategies that healthcare organizations can use to effectively organize and interpret stratified
quality data to improve health equity for their patients. It is intended for healthcare organizations and collaboratives that already have quality data stratified by one or more demographic variables. However, there are many resources on how to best collect and stratify race, ethnicity, language (R/E/L), sexual orientation, gender identity (SOGI) and other demographic data. Using stratified quality data strategically allows healthcare organizations to:
- Discover and prioritize differences in care, outcomes, and/or experiences across patient groups
- Plan Equity-Focused Care Transformations and Measure Impact
- Tell the story of how patients experience health care