Boston Disparities Project - Data Collection Regulations

The Boston Disparities Project (Project), developed by the Boston Public Health Commission and Mayor Thomas M. Menino, focuses on eliminating health disparities among the City's minority populations. The Commission recognizes that in order to identify and combat differences in health care use and health outcomes, an accurate and consistent system for collecting patient demographics is integral to closing the gap. Several Year 1 Project grants were distributed to acute care hospitals and community health centers to work on creating a framework for a system to capture this information. This work was instrumental in a July 2006 vote from the Board of Health of the Commission in favor of mandatory data collection regulations. All acute care providers will be required to have a system in place by fall of 2007 to collect information on each patient's race, ethnicity, preferred language, and level of education. We hope to share our City's strategies in implementing these data collection regulations, for we believe that accurate data collection is a powerful and useful tool in eliminating health disparities. Data can also be used overall to improve the quality of care. Armed with patterns extrapolated from patient demographics, health departments and health institutions across the country will be better suited to develop public health programs and interventions that are targeted to the needs of their population.