When leadership at the very top of the organization—governance—makes health equity a priority, improved patient safety outcomes is the result, say experts.
Key steps for the governing body to achieve organizational health equity goals is to include them in the strategic plan, then ensure senior leaders operationalize them to establish a culture that understands and embraces the goals.
Operationalizing means clinical and operational leaders are supported with the tools necessary—teams, technology, and data—to implement the health equity strategy and achieve success, according to Alisahah Jackson, MD, system vice president, Innovation and Policy, for CommonSpirit Health.
The complementary piece is accountability—determining how to hold teams accountable for moving equity forward. Jackson says this involves making sure quality measures have a health equity focus, meaning the data is stratified by such factors and race, ethnicity, and gender. The composition of leadership, clinical, and governing teams should also be diverse.
“There’s a lot of different ways you can build that accountability in. And, I think that accountability should be spread across the organization,” Jackson says.
Set Up a Governance Structure
Marcus Schabacker, MD, president and CEO of ECRI, recommends creating a health equity governance committee to ensure health equity goals are supported and achieved.
“Create that person or committee whose sole responsibility is to identify these issues and then put a plan in place to fix it and measure on a frequent basis,” he says.
He also advises making progress on health equity part of management team quarterly or monthly reviews.
Critical to attaining an effective structure is finding someone who has “fire in the belly” for health equity, Schabacker says, meaning someone who is passionate, understands equity, wants to make a difference, and can develop an entire team.
“I also recommend that they include one or two doubters,” he adds. When presented with data, doubters will very quickly recognize inequities, and if they can change their mindset these doubters then become accelerators of equity throughout the organization. “Don’t just surround yourself with people who think like you,” Schabacker says.
Create Partnerships
Finally, Jackson says that executives and governing bodies can cultivate partnerships with community organizations that aid in furthering health equity goals. CommonSpirit, for example, has an alliance with the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta to create a stronger pipeline of diverse candidates in physicians, advanced practice providers and nursing roles. Workforce diversity fosters a better understanding of the needs of diverse patient populations, which also enhance patient safety and can lead to overall quality improvement.
“It’s just being thoughtful about leveraging new or existing partnerships in different ways to move health equity forward,” Jackson says.
Karen Wagner is a freelance healthcare writer based in Forest Lake, Ill.
Health Equity as a Patient Safety Imperative
It has become clear in healthcare that providing care equally and equitably is not the same.
Equal means treating everyone the same. Equitable is providing care services in a way that addresses the patient’s individual needs, which are based on demographic factors, such as age, gender, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic factors, such as housing, food security, income and education levels.