MedStar Washington Hospital Center

Commitment to health equity

Providing an exceptional patient experience and outcomes includes focusing on health equity.

In spring of 2023, we formally established our Health Equity operational structure, which consists of a Health Equity Leaders Coordinating Council (HELCC) that leads the work within the entities, and Health Equity Workgroups that provide actionable intelligence to inform the identification of healthcare disparity reduction priorities in partnership with the HELCC. The MedStar Health Quality & Safety Steering Committee serves as the governing body to approve the system priorities and sponsors the health equity initiatives. Together, these groups will develop and implement data-driven and community informed health equity strategies to reduce disparities across the system.

Health Equity Leaders Coordinating Council members were appointed at each entity to oversee execution to generate health equity advances within their entities and contribute to the implementation of systemwide health care disparity priorities reduction.

Health Equity Workgroups consist of multidisciplinary subject matter experts and key stakeholders from across the system, including all 10 hospitals, Home Care and Ambulatory Care. The workgroup synthesizes recommendations for health equity initiatives that are data-driven and community-engaged and support entity action plans. They focus on investigating options to improve performance, address gaps in existing demographic and language data, increase cultural humility in patient demographic data collection, and eliminate any systemic bias that affects equitable care.

Social Needs Tool and Patient Data Optimization – As race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other factors can render a patient subject to disparate care, we are working to improve the completeness and accuracy of data needed to support health equity initiatives. We want to ensure our patient data reflects the way our patients identify themselves and want to be represented. Beyond mere data capture, this entails educating our frontline teams about interpersonal approaches and methods that ensure appropriate interactions with patients.

In January 2024, Acute Case Management, Nursing, and Community Health collaborated to generate a new protocol to expand screening for social drivers of health social needs screening. All adult patients admitted to medicine, surgery or critical care are screened for unmet social needs such as housing, food, safety or transportation. As of June 2024, this initiative had generated 41,387 screenings, with nearly 2,300 social needs identified. Of patients with identified needs, 98% received a bilingual postcard to the MedStar Health Social Needs Tool and an opportunity to connect with Community Health for linkage to support services. An additional 600 screenings were completed at MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital since the program was implemented there in March.

Cultural Humility in Demographic Data Collection: A new training program nurtures an inclusive experience at registration as associates acquire patient demographic data, Added features in our registration system support more complete and accurate data collection. Our frontline teams learn about interpersonal approaches and methods that ensure appropriate interactions with patients during the intake process. Cultural Humility training is required of all associates in patient-facing roles that collect personal information. More than 600 associates completed training within the first month of rollout.