Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data: Standardization for Health Care Quality Improvement - Institute of Medicine

Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data: Standardization for Health Care Quality Improvement

Free Webinar Opportunity: Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data to Improve Health Care Quality

A lack of standardization of race, ethnicity, and language categories has been raised as one obstacle to achieving more widespread collection and utilization of these data. In 2009 AHRQ commissioned the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to examine approaches to standardization that could enhance measures that AHRQ collects and reports on in the National Healthcare Disparities Report. Your Voice is offering a free webinar that will provide an in-depth look at the just-released IOM report, "Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data: Standardization for Health Care Quality Improvement" (www.iom.edu/datastandardization).

This webinar will be held Monday, September 21, 2009 at 1 PM – 2 PM Eastern Time. It features:


IOM Committee member Romana Hasnain-Wynia, speaking on what these recommendations mean for health care providers.
Grace Ting from WellPoint, Inc., a large health care system that collects and uses patient demographic data to improve health care quality and system performance.
An online Question & Answer session.
The opportunity to join a post-webinar Peer Learning Networkon this topic.

To register for this free webinar, go to: http://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/303778418

To learn more about Your Voice, go to: http://www.diversityRxConference.org/yourvoice


The quality of health care in the United States is not optimal, and the pace of improvement is slow. In addition, disparities persist for specific population groups. A fundamental step in identifying which populations are most at risk is to col­lect data on race, ethnicity, and English-language proficiency. A large body of research has documented disparities in access to and quality of health care that are revealed when quality of care measures are examined by these variables. A lack of standard­ization of race, ethnicity, and language categories has been raised as one obstacle to achieving more widespread collection and utilization of these data.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) formed the Subcommittee on Standardized Col­lection of Race/Ethnicity Data for Healthcare Quality Improvement to examine ap­proaches to standardization. In its 2009 report, Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data: Standardization for Health Care Quality Improvement, the subcommittee recommends collection of more granular ethnicity and language need according to national standards in addition to OMB race and Hispanic ethnicity categories. The presence of data on race, ethnicity, and lan­guage does not, in and of itself, guarantee subsequent actions in terms of analysis of quality-of-care data to identify health care needs or actions to reduce or eliminate disparities that are found. The absence of data, however, essentially guarantees that none of those actions will occur.


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Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data: Standardization for Health Care Quality Improvement - Institute of Medicine