Michigan hospitals unite to seek, address health inequities in care for kids
Michigan’s three largest children’s hospitals are teaming up in what they say is a historic collaboration to look for inequities in how pediatric patients are treated. The goal is to address differences in the quality of patient care associated with gender, race and ethnicity, income, disability, sexual orientation, weight and more.
It's part of the Michigan Child Health Equity Collaborative — a first-of-its-kind partnership between Detroit-based Children’s Hospital of Michigan, the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor and Corewell Health Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids.
"Equity is one of those topics that's near and dear to our hearts because we want to believe — and we do believe — as leaders of children's hospitals that the care that we provide is no different based on gender, race, ethnicity, income, you name all the variables," said Archie Drake, CEO of Children's Hospital of Michigan.
First child health equity quality collaborative in U.S.
"While that is our premise ... what we're going to do is collaborate ... to really prove the fact that there is no difference. If we run across something that we could do better through this exploration, we're going to do that. ... The people that are going to win are going to be the children in the community."
The project was the brainchild of Dr. Gary Freed, a pediatrician at Mott.
"This is the first child health equity quality collaborative in the United States, and it's exciting that our state is willing to be supportive of such an effort and also to understand and appreciate the importance of working in this arena," Freed said.
"We will not simply find and name problems," Freed said. "We are going to work to do something about it."
They'll start by looking at the accuracy of race and ethnicity designations within their own hospitals' medical records.
"The first step is to be able to find out how accurate we are in those designations," Freed said. "That's really not been done in a meaningful way across children's health institutions, so we're also charting new ground in that area. And then secondly, we've been doing interviews and focus groups in each of the three partner institutions, where we have been meeting with physicians, nurses, social workers, child life professionals, leadership and clergy, to find out ... where people hypothesize inequities may be taking place.
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"It could be inequities by ability status, by gender, by sexual orientation, by race or ethnicity or by income gradient or even the way in which people may perceive people from different weight classifications. There's all sorts of potential ways in which we may be treating kids differently."
For example, Freed said they might discover that a hospital is unknowingly treating pain differently in boys than in girls, or that children who use wheelchairs don't get physical exams that are as thorough as children who don't use wheelchairs.
"We don't hypothesize people do it because they're evil," he said. "We hypothesize we all have unconscious biases, ... and we don't realize they're going on. We want to be able to to be able to put protocols into place ... to make sure that we that we treat kids equitably. ... We want to make sure that we provide care to children that they deserve."
Lynn Sutfin, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said the University of Michigan is funding the project, with matching Medicaid grant money.
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"This study has the potential to improve health outcomes for Michigan’s children," Sutfin said. "There are many studies for adults, but limited research has been conducted in the pediatric population, with even fewer solutions identified to address equity issues for children. This project has the potential to change that, which would profoundly and positively impact the state’s Medicaid program."
Contact Kristen Shamus: kshamus@freepress.com. Subscribe to the Free Press.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan hospitals to study, address health inequities in kids' care
