Research

The project: This project aims to examine the potential for inequity resulting from variation in the actual care provided by clinicians and hospital personnel to children and their families. Considerable research demonstrates differences by gender, income, race, and ethnicity in the way adult patients are provided care across numerous conditions (e.g., heart attacks, treatment for pain, diagnostic testing). However, with very rare exceptions, similar studies have not been conducted with regard to the care of children. This project provides the first critical steps in beginning a process to assess the perceptions of inequities at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

The process: Discussions with nursing, clerical, and therapy staff have identified several potential areas where hypothesized inequities in the way families are provided care may exist, and the research team focused on three areas:

1. Determining how patients’ race and ethnicity information is typically collected and verified in medical records. The researchers found hospital staff typically ask a child’s parent about the child’s identity.
2. Determining the process by which exceptions to the visitor policy in neonatal and pediatric intensive care units during COVID-19 were granted as well as the race, ethncity, and socio-economic status of the people who were granted exceptions.
3. Determining the socio-economic status and racial and ethnic composition of the patients of whom the families had security called on them and how this compares to the overall demographic composition of patients at Mott Hospital.

Results: As a result of these evaluations, the researchers are working with Quality Improvement Specialists at Mott to address inequities where they exist. 

Dr. Gary Freed, Michigan Medicine and School of Public Health