Health Equity and Quality of Care Assessment: A Continuing Challenge
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Reducing racial and/or ethnic disparities in a variety of health outcomes from neonatal, infant, and adult mortality to premature birth rates has been a hospital, state, and national goal. One area of focus has been differences in the types of care (or quality of care) that patients from minority racial/ethnic groups receive compared with non-Hispanic white patients. Profit et al1 provide new evidence of this potential issue as applied to perinatal medicine. By using data from >100 perinatal hospitals in California, the authors document substantial differences in the care quality received by non-Hispanic African American and Hispanic patients compared with non-Hispanic white patients.