Diversity & Inclusion
As a Wabash General Hospital patient, you will be asked for more detailed information about your race, ethnic background, and preferred language. This will help Wabash General Hospital better care for our community.
What does this mean?
- When you check in at your appointment, a registration employee will ask you more detailed questions about your race, ethnicity, and preferred language. This should only take a few extra minutes.
- Better patient data will help Wabash General Hospital monitor patient diseases and conditions by race and ethnicity and improve the quality of care we can provide to diverse patient populations.
- Wabash General Hospital will use the information to ensure the availability of language interpretation services and appropriate patient education materials and to track data to improve patient care quality.
FAQs about collecting patient race, ethnicity, and primary language data
1. Why is collecting patients' race, ethnicity, and primary language data necessary?
Data on patients' race, ethnicity, and primary language are limited or inaccurate. These data are critical to documenting our progress in eliminating disparities in health care and improving the quality of care.
2. What are health care disparities?
Health care disparities refer to differences in health services provided that may be based on race, ethnicity, language, gender, sexual orientation, social class, age, education, or geographical location of residence. Wabash General Hospital wants to continue improving healthcare quality by providing care that does not vary by personal characteristics.
3. If I have been seeing my doctor or provider for years, don't they have this information already?
We may already have the information, but in some instances, we do not. We want to ensure we have the correct information for everyone so we can continue to ensure that everyone gets the best quality of care regardless of race or ethnicity.
4. Who sees this information?
Registration staff, hospital administrators, and the people involved in quality improvement. All patient information collected by Wabash General Hospital is confidential and protected by HIPAA law.
5. What if I want to avoid answering the race/ethnicity questions?
Answering these questions is voluntary but will help Wabash General Hospital better serve each patient. The nationwide hospital accreditation agencies increasingly require this information, allowing them to monitor the nation's progress in providing high-quality care to all patients.
