Charting a Course for Health Care Quality Improvement: Data-Driven Strategies for Eliminating Health Disparities

As our nation continues to pursue comprehensive health care reform, the need to improve health care quality and achieve equitable care for all Americans remains a critical issue that must be addressed. High-quality health care is seldom consistently distributed across populations, and vulnerable groups – such as racial, ethnic, and linguistic minorities – are more likely to be negatively affected by disparities in health care.

On March 25, the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform hosted a national conference to begin to address health care quality issues faced by vulnerable communities. Key stakeholders came together to:

• Advance strategies for improved data collection, integration, and utilization activities, as well as disparities measurement to promote health care equity; and

• Identify best practices for collecting and reporting race, ethnicity, and primary language data, as well as determine practical, consensus-driven steps to measure and use these data to improve quality of care.