JANUARY 9, 2006 -- While health care has improved for many Americans, gaps have widened in both the quality of care and access to care for Hispanics, according to two reports released on Monday by the Department of Health and Human Service's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
Significant disparities between minorities and whites continue to exist with some signs of improvement, according to the 2005 National Healthcare Disparities Report. Overall, racial disparities in most of both the quality measurements and the access measurements were narrowing. But for Hispanics, the disparities in a majority of both the quality measurements and the access measurements were growing, researchers found. For example, the quality of diabetes care declined from 2000 to 2002 among Hispanic adults while it improved among white adults.
The report found that disparities related to race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status still pervade the American health system, while they vary in magnitude by condition and population. The disparities exist in several areas, including:
- Quality of health care, such as effectiveness, patient safety, timeliness, and patient centeredness.
- Access to preventative care, treatment of acute conditions, and management of chronic disease.
- Clinical conditions, including cancer, diabetes, end stage renal disease, and heart disease.
- Across health care settings, such as primary care, dental care, home health care, and emergency departments.
The National Healthcare Disparities Report and its companion document, the National Healthcare Quality Report, were issued Monday at the National Leadership Summit on Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health, which was sponsored by the HHS Office of Minority Health. The reports, issued annually, measure quality and disparities in four key areas of health care: effectiveness, patient safety, timeliness, and patient centeredness.
The reports conclude that while the overall quality of care for all Americans improved at a rate of 2.8 percent—the same rate of increase as in last year's report—there has been much more rapid improvement in some measures, in particular where there have been efforts to improve care. The report, for example, finds a 10.2 percent annual improvement in five core measures of public safety, according to an AHRQ news release.
Yet significant disparities between minorities and whites continue. The National Healthcare Disparities Report found that together, blacks, American Indians, and Alaska Natives received lower quality care than whites for about 40 percent of core report measures, while Hispanics received worse care than non-Hispanic whites for over half of the core report measures and better care for 16 percent of the measures.
Minorities and the poor also have worse access to care, researchers found. For example, blacks and American Indians and Alaska Natives experienced worse access to care than whites for half of core report measures and better access to care for no measures. Hispanics had worse access to care than non-Hispanic Whites for 88 percent of care measures, the report on health care disparities found.