Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data: Standardization for Health Care Quality Improvement

System Level

To improve population health, health care quality, and equity

Patient-Provider Level

To improve communication by identifying and understanding the cultural beliefs and experiences of racial and ethnic groups and by the communication of health care needs and information in the language the patient best understands

System Level

• Define population being served or not being served
• Plan for services (e.g., interpreters, targeted outreach, translation of materials, cultural competency training)
• Analyze quality metrics by race, ethnicity, and language

Patient-Provider Level

• Understand if there are patterns in access and outcomes for different segments of the patient population
• Save time by having interpretation services available at visit
• Increase patient and provider understanding

• Adequacy of OMB categories
• Needed level of granularity for race and ethnicity variables
• Desirability of information on spoken and written language
• Nomenclature for categories
• Hierarchical rollup for aggregation
• Coding practices
• Key points of leverage