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HealthPartners Collects Race, Ethnicity and Language Preference Data on Membership to Reduce Health Disparities

HealthPartners today announced that it has begun collecting data, in the aggregate, of the race, ethnicity and language preferences of its members who choose to provide the information on the secure, member area of healthpartners.com. HealthPartners is collecting the information on a voluntary basis and will use it to improve health care quality. HealthPartners will not use the information to determine eligibility, rating or claims payment. HealthPartners is the first Minnesota health plan to collect this data.

Members have three options when being offered the survey on HealthPartners.com. Choose to answer any or all of three questions, which takes only a few seconds; decline to answer any questions and not be asked again, or request to be asked at another time.

"Data Collection is an important first step in eliminating health disparities in the populations we serve," said Donna Zimmerman, HealthPartners vice president of government and community relations and co-chair of the organization's Cross Cultural Care and Service Task Force. She notes that the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has identified data collection as one of eight strategies to reduce the disparities in the quality of care and health outcomes among different racial and ethnic groups.

"Health care disparities among different racial, ethnic and linguistic populations are well documented by research," said Zimmerman. She cites the Institute of Medicine's landmark report "Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care" which found that racial and ethnic minorities tend to receive lower-quality health care than whites, even when insurance status, income, age, and severity of conditions are comparable. The report also found that differences in treatment partly contribute to higher death rates for minorities.

In Minnesota examples of health disparities include:

--  African American, American Indian, and Asian/Pacific Islander women in
    Minnesota are three to four times more likely than white women to have
    cervical cancer even though routine screening can prevent it.

--  African Americans are more than twice as likely to die from diabetes
    compared to whites even though the disease can be managed by controlling
    blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol.

--  Infant mortality rates in Minnesota are two to three times higher
    among American Indian and African American communities compared to whites.

--  African American women in Minnesota are 25 percent more likely to die
    of breast cancer compared to white women even though the survival rate for
    breast cancer is 97 percent when it is diagnosed at an early stage.
    

"Eliminating health disparities is consistent with HealthPartners commitment to provide care and service that is patient-centered, safe, timely, efficient, effective and equitable," said Zimmerman. These are aims HealthPartners adopted from "Crossing the Quality Chasm," another IOM report that focused on improving health care for all Americans.

Note to editors: a personal demonstration of the data collection page is available.

About HealthPartners

HealthPartners (www.healthpartners.com) is the largest consumer-governed, non-profit health care organization in the nation with commercial and Medicare Advantage plans that received the highest rating of "Excellent" from the National Committee for Quality Assurance.

Distributed by Market Wire