What is Health Equity?
Equitable care does not vary in quality because of personal characteristics such as gender identity, sexual orientation, gender expression, religion, race, ethnicity, preferred language, geographic location or socioeconomic status. Quality care cannot be achieved without equity.
Despite decades of evidence showing persistent health disparities impacting populations made vulnerable by racism and discrimination, progress is slow to close the gaps. Quality initiatives measuring only outcomes of general populations may conceal widening gaps in care or disparate outcomes of historically marginalized groups. Focused efforts are needed to uncover health disparities within health systems, train staff to better understand root causes of inequities in healthcare and partner with communities to address social needs.
Getting Started
Collect Demographic Data
Collecting detailed patient demographics, in a respectful patient-centered way, allows for informative population health analysis, including the ability to detect health disparities.
- Curated Resources for Hospitals collecting and reporting race, ethnicity, language, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability demographics, as required by WAC 246-455-025.
- Pediatric SOGI Recommendations for hospital collection of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) from youth. These are endorsed by the WSHA Board Clinical Excellence Committee.
- SOGI Data Collection Continuous Quality Improvement Recognition program is available to WA hospitals making improvements towards providing safe affirming experiences for LGBTQ+ patients.
Get involved:
Join the WSHA Gender-Affirming Care workgroup. Its purpose is to empower WA hospitals to provide safe respectful environments and care experiences for gender diverse and LGBTQ+ patients.
Screen for Health-Related Social Needs
Several quality reporting programs are adopting social drivers of health (SDOH) measures. Since health-related social needs, like access to housing and food, heavily impact patient health outcomes, hospitals are asked to consistently screen and assist with connecting patients to community resources.
SDOH-1: Screening for Social Drivers of Health Measure
SDOH-2: Screen Positive Rate for Social Drivers of Health Measure
Frequently asked questions for SDOH Measures (updated April 2024)
Reporting timeframe for hospitals:
- CMS Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR; IPPS hospitals): Mandatory reporting of calendar year 2024 begins April 2025.
- CMS Medicare Beneficiary Quality Improvement Project (MBQIP; critical access hospitals): Mandatory reporting of calendar year 2024 begins May 2025.
- CMS Inpatient Psychiatric Facility Quality Reporting (IPFQR; psych hospitals): Voluntary reporting in 2025; Mandatory reporting begins 2026.
- CMS Rural Emergency Hospital Quality Reporting (REHQR); Voluntary reporting in 2026; Mandatory reporting begins 2027.
Get involved:
Join the WSHA SDOH Workgroup. Its purpose is to improve efforts within WA hospitals to universally screen for core health-related social needs (housing, transportation, food, utilities and interpersonal violence) and develop workflows to address or connect patients to needed community services.
Stay Connected with the Health Equity Roundtable
Health equity leaders are invited to connect with peers to stay current on health equity policies, share promising approaches for reducing health disparities and improving access to care. Hosted by WSHA, virtual convenings take place every other month. Each session provides updates from the field, focuses on a topic of interest and allows time for requesting/offering support.
Registration is restricted to WSHA member hospital staff. To receive invitations to health equity related events hosted by WSHA, please complete the contact form.
Tools and Resources
Roadmap to Reduce Disparities – a link to the Solving Disparities Roadmap to Reduce Disparities, a six-step framework for health care organizations to improve minority health and foster equity.
Equity of Care: A Toolkit for Eliminating Health Care Disparities – a PDF toolkit published by the Health Research and Education Trust for eliminating health care disparities.
A Guide to Reducing Disparities in Readmissions – a PDF document, this guide provides clear, concise, practical, and actionable recommendations for hospital leaders focused on health care quality, safety, and redesign.
National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center, A Program of the Fenway Institute – Education and training on collection of sexual orientation and gender identity data, as well as health topics for supporting gender diverse and LGBTQ patients.
The Do No Harm Project, Urban Institute – The Do No Harm Guide body of work consists of several guides for how researchers and analysts can approach their work through a lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Bree Collaborative Recommendations on Social Determinants of Health – a PDF document detailing a framework, checklists and tools for screening and referring patients with health-related social needs.
Past Programming
In 2021, 30 hospital and health system teams across WA and OR, representing over 50 sites of care, enrolled in the WSHA Health Equity Collaborative. They participated for 18-months in an “all teach, all learn” collaborative including the implementation of three 90-day implementation sprints. Sprint goals included improving effective language access services, collecting patient self-reported race and ethnicity data, promoting use of pronouns, designing health equity dashboards, screening and addressing health-related social needs and other foundational components of delivering equitable care. The Health Equity Collaborative concluded in Dec, 2022.
