Chair Files

Collecting REAL Data

Listening to patients and the community can spark change. The Lehigh Valley Health Network, in east central Pennsylvania, held a patient-centered experience retreat for hospital staff, community organizations, former patients and family members. Feedback revealed that though the network provided high-quality care, it was not meeting patients' cultural, religious and ethnic needs. With guidance from senior leadership, the network implemented a strategic plan that included as goals understanding the importance of collecting patient demographics to identify disparities and standardizing collection of patient race, ethnicity and primary language (REAL) data. Changes were made to the registration process to ensure collection of meaningful data. For example, a "some other race" category previously received the second largest response for certain quality indicators that were tracked. That category was eliminated, and race and ethnicity category descriptions were refined. Now the "unavailable or refused" category represents less than 5 percent of all admissions. Contact Judith Sabino, M.P.H., diversity/cultural liaison, at Judith.Sabino@lvhn.org for more information. Visit www.hpoe.org for more case studies on health care equity.

  

Additional Resources

Webinars December 13th, 2017

Equity of Care Webinar SeriesPart 2: Aligning Diversity and Inclusion, Community Engagement, Busi......

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Webinars November 20th, 2017

Equity of Care Webinar SeriesPart 1: Aligning Diversity and Inclusion, Community Engagement, Busi......

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Webinars November 17th, 2017

Transportation and the Role of Hospitals This AHA webinar on “Transportation and the Role of Hos......

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