In one of the latest research reports focused on the impact of data on health equity, findings published today in Arthritis Care & Research highlight the negative impacts of missing demographic, socioeconomic and clinical data. The study focused on children with lupus and found that incomplete data can magnify existing differences by supporting perceived results that distort actual impacts and outcomes among certain populations.
The study found that patients within a population segment was missing over 6 percent of data, while more than half of the participants were missing at least one variable. Moreover, with the incidence of missing data being higher for government-supported health insurance than for private health insurance, it becomes clear why a strong correlation exists with respect to demographic, clinical and socioeconomic variables.
This research is just the latest in a long history of studies looking at the sufficiency of data collection and its impact on health equity. In February, a research report of the American Health Information Management Association highlighted that while eight of ten surveyed health care organizations are collecting data on the social determinants of health, a broad range of systemic obstacles to collecting, coding and using that data inhibit the effective utilization of that information to help reduce health disparities and improve health equity.
This latest research publication can be accessed here.
