Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion

US hospitals' quality performance for racial and ethnic equity show improvement between 2005 and 2010.

A study by CHERP investigators and colleagues found that improved performance for white, black and Hispanic adults hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction, pneumonia and heart failure was accompanied by increased racial and ethnic equity in performance rates both within and among U.S. hospitals between 2005 – 2010.  Their article, Quality and equity of care in U.S. hospitals was published in the December 11, 2014 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.  http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1405003#t=abstract

CHERP's Michael Fine, MD, MSc, Leslie Hausmann, PhD, and Maria Mor, PhD were part of the investigative team, which found overall improvements in the performance of quality measures as high as 57.6 percentage points. This better performance contributed to decreases in gaps in care among black, white and Hispanic adult patients.

 "It is heartening that we found higher quality of care overall and large reductions in racial and ethnic disparities in health care for patients with these common conditions," Fine said. "However it is critically important to demonstrate that these improvements in care are accompanied by better patient outcomes. Further studies are needed to investigate if racial and ethnic disparities in mortality have also decreased over time."

Care given during more than 12 million hospitalizations of black, white and Hispanic patients from 2005 to 2010 for acute myocardial infarction, pneumonia and heart failure was considered for the study. Data used for the study was self-reported by hospitals and funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Career Development Program.