On Jan. 4, The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety (JQPS) published a special 50th anniversary issue on healthcare equity. The announcement, made via a press release, said that the issue has several original articles, review articles, and other reports to assist healthcare organizations to take a system-based approach to achieving health equity.
One study entitled, “Investigating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Maternal Care at the System Level Using Patient Safety Incident Reports,” is featured in the issue and takes a deep drive into the disproportionate rates of mortality and maternal morbidity (SMM) in regard to women and birthing people of color.
Further, “Researchers reviewed incidents reported in the labor and delivery unit (L&D) and the antepartum and postpartum unit (A&P) at a large academic hospital in 2019 and 2020. Deliveries associated with a reported incident were described by race/ethnicity, age group, method of delivery and other process variables. Differences across racial ethnic groups were statistically evaluated.”
According to the press release, researchers analyzed 528 incident reports that occurred among:
- Non-Hispanic white (NHW) patients – 43.9%
- Non-Hispanic Black (NHB) patients – 43.2%
- Hispanic patients – 8.9%
- Other patients – 4%
The release adds that “NHB patients were disproportionally represented in the incident reports, as they accounted for only 36.5% of the underlying birthing population. The odds of having a reported incident for NHB patients were attenuated when controlling for cesarean section. This indicates that cesarean delivery is a confounder for the association between race and reported incident.”
The Joint Commission has the full press release.
