ECRI Report Finds Patients and Providers Are Subjected to Racial Comments

Oct. 19, 2022

A new report found that both patients and providers are on the receiving end of insensitive comments regarding race—57 percent of events were committed by patients and 42 percent were committed by staff

Janette Wider

On Oct. 18, Plymouth Meeting, Penn.-headquartered ECRI Institute, an independent, nonprofit organization aiming to improve the safety, quality, and cost-effectiveness of care across all healthcare settings, published a report entitled, “ECRI’s Deep Dive: Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health and Healthcare.” The report finds that patients and healthcare providers are often on the receiving end of inappropriate comments about race.

A press release on the report states that “A review of more than 500 patient safety incidents related to race showed that 57 percent were related to patients making inappropriate racial comments or engaging in racist behavior. Racist incidents committed by staff were the focus of 42 percent of reported incidents.”

Moreover, “ECRI experts say experiencing repeated race-related safety incidents can have an extremely negative effect on providers’ mental health. They may consider leaving healthcare, a particularly acute threat to hospitals and health systems that are currently experiencing serious staffing shortages.”

In collaboration with ECRI, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices PSO analyzed a year of events associated with racial or ethnic minority groups. The data was sorted into seven categories including:

Patient/family making insensitive comments regarding race or ethnicity: 56 percent
Patient claiming that others are racist or engaged in racist behavior: 22 percent
Patient/family reporting disparate care because of patient/family race or ethnicity: 9 percent
Staff making inappropriate comments regarding race or ethnicity: 7 percent
Staff reporting management or supervisor discriminating against them: 4 percent
Patient requesting for provider or staff member based on race or ethnicity: 1 percent
Interpretation or translation services not provided: 1 percent

As for reducing disparities, the report comments that “Recognizing where racial and ethnic disparities exist in your organization and in the communities it serves is only the first step in eliminating them. To truly reduce racial and ethnic disparities in care, healthcare organizations need to make both short- and long-term commitments that should be reflected in the organization’s mission and strategic plans. In addition, the healthcare organization must be prepared to devote extensive resources in the form of funding, training, time, and program deployment to eliminate health disparities. Organizations must address the issue at all levels—from leadership to frontline staff to patients.”

Strategies to reduce disparities, according to the report, include:

Focusing efforts on one or two main areas at a time and creating strategic initiatives for those areas
Reviewing budget plans and allocating funding to health equity efforts
Analyzing new payment models to secure funding for health equity efforts

Marcus Schabacker, M.D., Ph.D., president and CEO at ECRI was quoted in the release saying that “As health systems implement diversity, equity, and inclusion plans, the needs of providers of color must be taken into account, as well as those of patients. Creating an equitable and safe environment requires recognizing when racist incidents occur and taking action in response.”