Accountability Through Measurement: Using a Dashboard to Address Pediatric Health Disparities

Nearly 2 decades after equity was identified as a key quality health care aim, widespread racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes persist.^1,2 There have been recent pressing calls for equity to be more thoroughly integrated into quality and safety efforts.^3,4 In the wake of uprisings against police brutality and systemic racism, Hardeman et al,³ in a 2020 New England Journal of Medicine commentary, recommend that health systems be required to achieve equity in outcomes. Sivashanker and Gandhi⁴ suggest using stratified data from existing quality and safety infrastructure to bring visibility and transparency to racial inequities in health care institutions and systems. Leveraging quality improvement (QI) data collection to identify disparities by stratifying routinely collected demographic data has been proposed as a key to developing equitable, disparities-targeted QI interventions.⁵ Equity-focused QI is not a one-size-fits-all approach to improving quality but rather entails interventions designed to improve care for all patients, with emphases on groups experiencing disparate access, care, or outcomes.⁵ Pediatric hospitals invested in improving equity in patient outcomes are encouraged to conduct QI assessments that account for race to most appropriately tailor improvement efforts.⁶

Address correspondence to Gabrielle Hester, MD, MS, Department of Quality, Children’s Minnesota, 2525 Chicago Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55404. E-mail: gabrielle.hester{at}childrensmn.org