Maximizing Data Capture for Race and Ethnicity of Children Admitted to Critical Care Units

Required reading for all learners: Implicit Bias impacts patient outcomes

Access to complete patient sociodemographic data in a hospital’s electronic health record (EHR) is important for identifying and understanding where health inequities exist and for designing focused interventions to close inequitable healthcare gaps. In our pediatric academic medical center, we made a commitment—in the form of a declaration on equity, diversity, and inclusivity—to being leaders in eliminating child health disparities in our community and in the nation. This commitment led to many hospital-wide actionable steps and initiatives to address inequities in healthcare access, delivery, and outcomes. A plan-do-study-act framework guided this initiative to improve collection of data on the race and ethnicity of ICU patients. Via 4 plan-do-study-act cycles, care vulnerabilities and implemented tests of change were evaluated to achieve the goal of capturing sociodemographic data within 72 hours of patient admission.