Linking Quality and Equity
Equity and Quality are connected. Equity is a cross-cutting component of quality. As such, it also needs to be a cross-cutting component of quality improvement.
Some people think that equity is only an issue of access. In other words, that disparities are caused by the fact that many minority patients can't easily access affordable healthcare.
It is true that many patients from minority backgrounds have poor access to care. However, research has demonstrated that that even when access to care is equal, racial and ethnic minority patients tend to receive lower quality care than do white patients.
So, even equal access can result in unequal care. Likewise, quality improvement that only focuses on the overall population, and fails to address racial and ethnic differences, can result in unequal quality.
We know that even when quality improvement efforts improve outcomes across the entire patient population, disparities between racial/ethnic groups can remain or even worsen.