How Data-Driven Care Can Help Heal Systemic Disparities in Health

Data has done a lot to improve health care. It now gives us near-constant, comprehensive feedback on many aspects of human health. Heart rate, blood pressure, and glucose levels can all be tracked remotely, giving doctors more information than ever, often even when the patient is miles away.

But is data powerful enough to fight back against race-related health care disparities? That’s a tall order. What data can do is help us understand what problems exist. From there, it’s up to humans to interpret the information and take action.

In this article, we take a look at which disparities persist and what might be done to close the gap.

Overview

To begin with, what systemic disparities are there in health care? The answer to that question is complicated — and even now, not completely understood. What we do know is that minorities experience worse outcomes in health care settings than members of majority groups.

We don’t know exactly why. It’s certainly not accurate to say that health care professionals have an active bias against minority patients, at least not on any large scale.

What’s happening instead are layers of systemic issues that contribute to consistently different outcomes. This includes everything from minority access to preventative care to how physicians perceive people who come from cultural backgrounds different from their own.

In the next few headings, we’ll take a look at what these issues are. From there, we’ll examine how data can be used to help solve the problem.

Accessibility Problems

It’s also true that minority groups often have less access to preventative or long-term care. The types of accessibility disparities can vary from financial to practical. In some cases, minority group members might not have insurance coverage or even the adequate finances to pay for routine care.

In other cases, they might have the money but still struggle to get to their health care clinic. In either case, accessibility concerns are a major barrier to good long-term results.

Outcome Disparities

There is a very clear and well-documented disparity in healthcare outcomes among minority groups. This is particularly prominent for Black women, who experience extraordinarily high rates of maternity deaths.

While the exact reason behind this is hard to say, many people believe a large factor is that Black women often are unable to access prenatal care with the same regularity that white women are.

However, this certainly does not account for all of the issues. Even Serena Williams almost fell victim to this very troubling statistic when doctors failed to take some of her complaints seriously. Obviously, you can’t take one incident and say, see, this is what’s happening, and it’s happening to everyone.

Nevertheless, it does speak to a larger truth. Communication gaps are a very major issue in the world of healthcare, and they are often most prevalent among people who are members of a minority group trying to articulate concerns to members of a majority group.

What Data Can Do to Help

There are a few ways in which data can help fight back against these gaps in care. For one thing, it can help identify problems. All of the insights that we have provided above are more or less the direct result of years of data collection.

Data can also help more directly on an individual level. Wearable health devices, for example, help make high-quality care more accessible for the general population. They are relatively inexpensive and can allow physicians to track patients even when they can’t get to the hospital very often.

This can be groundbreaking for people who care about their health but simply aren’t able to make it in for regular appointments. Even wearable devices that are as simple as a Fitbit or a comparable product can provide valuable data points that can be used to level the playing field and help ensure that everyone has high-quality access to health care.

Data can also help hospitals develop a better understanding of where they are failing to serve minority demographics and give them an indication of how to better harness their resources to fix the problem.

Organizations are already constantly using improved data access to optimize efficiency and make the most of limited resources. Obviously, progress is incremental. No one is out there saying that American health care has reached a state of perfection. However, it would be fair to say that we’ve come a long way and are continuing to progress well.

Data can also be used to help healthcare communities evaluate personnel issues and take proactive steps to address them. For example, we all know there is a significant nursing shortage that has been felt across the country. With this information, hospitals can develop programs focused on retention. Universities—and even high school guidance counselors—can work on sustainable recruitment strategies to improve the situation over time. This fix isn’t specific to minority communities, but it can enhance healthcare overall.

It’s also relevant for other roles that don’t get as much publicity. Every town needs a good pharmacist, right? There are also healthcare social workers, nurse practitioners, psychiatric professionals, and more.

It’s important to monitor personnel numbers because staffing problems usually don’t happen overnight. The current nursing shortage, for example, started more than 15 years ago when nurses began retiring at a faster rate than they were entering the profession.

Conclusion

Data alone is not enough to fix the problem of race-related healthcare disparities. It will take effort, time, and money to fix healthcare’s most pressing issues. It will also require a significant amount of will. A large number of people will need to say, “It’s important to us that you fix this.”

If you’d like to add your voice to that choir, there are a few ways to do it. A good start? Reach out to your local hospital or clinic. Ask them what they are doing to reduce the problem of race-related healthcare disparities.

There are many ways to positively influence your local healthcare community. As an advocate or a care provider, you can make a difference.