There are serious concerns with the quality of health care in the United States. Too often, health care falls short on important principles, such as safety, effectiveness, timeliness, efficiency, equity, and patient-centeredness. These shortcomings results in a gap between appropriate care and what is actually being delivered.
Unfortunately, the gap in quality of care is even greater for racial and ethnic minorities, including Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders who face cultural and language barriers when accessing health care. Identifying cultural and linguistic competence as a quality measure would strengthen quality improvement programs and equip health care systems to respond to the unique needs of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities.
People of color and indigenous peoples receive lower quality of care, even after adjusting for factors such as insurance status, income, and severity of condition. On many measures of quality of care received by Asian Americans, disparities have remained the same or worsened (National Health Disparities Report, 2007).
High quality care warrants that appropriate care maximizes the likelihood of positive health outcomes. At the most basic level, this requires health systems to be responsive to patients and to develop mechanisms for culturally and linguistically appropriate care. Having a choice of providers is also important.
Particularly for underserved Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, access to community-based care and/or culturally competent physicians is a major factor in finding a medical home. Other factors in selecting a medical home include improving health information technology, payment incentives, prevention, primary care, data collection, language access and workforce diversity.
Key components of health care quality include:
- Cultural Competency
- Language Access
- Workforce Diversity
- Health Information Technolog
