Racial Disparities in HealthCare, this has negative consequences for both patients and healthcare workers, leading to higher risks of illness and, in some cases, lower standards of care for people of color. Hospitals and health systems can apply the data they have to drive their strategy to advance health equity. They can also use insights culled from data to identify racial disparities in healthcare, find the root causes and craft targeted interventions to reduce them, and improve health.

More challenging to deal with is unconscious, or implicit, bias by health care staff, everyone from the front desk staff to the care team and its impact on quality of care and health outcomes.  Cultural competency and unconscious bias training enhances the ability of providers and organizations to effectively deliver health care services that meet the social, cultural, and linguistic needs of patients. This, perhaps, is where data can help the most to understand health disparities and improve health equity as part of education, discussion and awareness of implicit bias and an organization wide commitment
that everyone will work to reduce/eliminate disparities.

One of the hallmarks of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States is its extraordinary impact on the health of Black, Indigenous, and other disadvantaged communities. Studies show that non-Hispanic American Indian, Alaska Native, and Black individuals were five times more likely and Latinx individuals four times more likely to be hospitalized for Covid-19 than non-Hispanic white individuals, after adjustment for age. Black patients are also dying at much higher rates. Brigham Health, a member of the not-for-profit Mass General Brigham health system, developed a robust data infrastructure to understand the differential impact of Covid-19 on its patients and staff; visualized data through dashboards to inform our hospital operations and infrastructure; and used this data to design high-impact strategies to reduce harm caused by racism and other forms of structural discrimination. This article offers key lessons learned throughout this process. —-SOURCE