Table 1.

A comprehensive strategy for equitable care in the Baylor Health Care System

• Increase awareness among providers and decision makers of the importance of equity in “achieving best care”

•Ensure equitable access to preventive and curative health care services

• Reduce uncertainty in clinical decisions through real-time patient medical record and clinical laboratory information, evidence-based guidelines, and recommended standards of best care

•Improve efficiency and coordination of all aspects of primary care, ambulatory care, specialty care, and hospital care

•Eliminate variations in health care that may be due to unconscious and conscious cost considerations, reimbursements, and patient insurance coverage or perceived ability to pay

•Increase the knowledge base to better understand the nature and causes of health care inequities and appropriate interventions to eliminate them

•Create a culturally competent health care system capable of delivering the highest-quality and safest care available to every patient regardless of race, ethnicity, social class, culture, ability to pay, or language proficiency

•Ensure health system accountability in equitable care quality by tracking, monitoring, and reporting equity quality measures

•Integrate the elimination of inequities with quality improvement