Unfortunately, we don’t all experience the healthcare system the same way. While the vast majority of patients in the United States have complaints regarding their healthcare options, the actual experiences vary significantly—based largely on cultural or economic grounds.
Better data has improved our ability to understand who is being let down by healthcare—and what to do about it.
In this article, we take a look at how data-driven insights can reveal gaps in both patient communication and overall equity.
Data Tells A Story
One of the best things about our modern access to data is that it tells stories previously unspoken. Patients in their personal explanations of the experiences they’ve had provide only a limited, subjective interpretation regarding the state of healthcare. It’s only through data that those insights become objective.
Let’s say, for example, that a large urban hospital receives 100 complaints in a single month. These comments range from grievances about the wait time, to individual reactions to the doctor’s bedside manner. Each individual complaint provides only an imperfect glimpse into what it is like to be a patient at this hospital. Healthcare data analysts often use sentiment analysis tools to categorize these complaints efficiently.
Certainly, not every report speaks to the general experience—nor should they all be assumed to be strictly accurate. Taken together, however, and in the context of several months’ worth of data, they can tell a story.
For example, do the complaints tend to come from people of a certain racial or economic background? Studies have consistently found that minorities are taken less seriously by healthcare staff than members of the majority group. Is that what the numbers at this particular hospital show? Hospitals with robust demographic tracking can identify these patterns quickly.
The insights can also paint a clearer picture of where and when patients are experiencing friction. Modern healthcare systems now use dashboards to visualize complaint patterns across departments and time periods.
Finding Gaps in Communication
Gaps in communication can have an enormous impact both on patient experiences and outcomes. At the strictly experiential level, patients often feel less comfortable with their healthcare options when they don’t fully understand them.
Unfortunately, in the typical hospital environment, these misunderstandings are very common. Doctors may see their patients for only a few minutes before making a diagnosis and creating a treatment plan. The patient will know little to nothing about what is going on or why specific choices are being made.
Data analytics can identify communication gaps by tracking patterns in patient feedback surveys and complaint records. Natural language processing tools can analyze thousands of patient comments to pinpoint specific communication breakdowns across departments or providers. Patient portal usage metrics can also reveal where information transfer is failing, showing which educational materials go unread or which discharge instructions generate the most follow-up questions.
How actionable are these insights? That will depend on the resources of the hospital. Communications are admittedly often rushed for a reason. Most healthcare systems are running on fumes during the best of times. In situations where the best possible outcome is achievable only with speed—not an uncommon occurrence in hospitals—patient conversations with physicians are often clipped for a reason.
Still, by pinpointing pain spots, healthcare systems can at the very least identify pocket areas for improvement. Even small changes can have a big impact on how patients experience the healthcare system.
Equity
We mentioned earlier that minorities often experience worse healthcare outcomes than majority group members who are in comparable situations. The exact reason behind this is difficult to fully explain. It should be noted that there is a wide range of extenuating circumstances that might influence the outcome gap.
One factor is that minorities often have less access to preventative care. Consequently, when they arrive at the hospital, the physicians taking care of them often have fewer points of reference than they might for someone who has been going in for twice-annual checkups for the past thirty years.
That said, cultural barriers undeniably play a role. Are there thousands of doctors and nurses who are overtly biased? Almost certainly not. What happens in most cases is unconscious bias.
Unconscious bias occurs when healthcare providers make automatic assumptions based on stereotypes without realizing they’re doing so. These implicit biases affect how providers interpret symptoms, determine treatment options, and establish rapport with patients from different backgrounds. Even highly trained professionals can unknowingly prioritize certain patients’ concerns over others based on deeply ingrained cultural assumptions.
Basically, well-meaning doctors and nurses may struggle to fully comprehend what they are being told. They might even unconsciously disregard statements made by patients from certain demographics if they assume that their statements come from an uneducated standpoint.
Research shows that implementing structured communication protocols and bias awareness training can reduce these disparities by up to 30% in some healthcare settings.
There are similar issues with ageism. Patients are assumed to be less competent at handling and interpreting their own health based on their age. While it is true that doctors and nurses are figures of authority within the healthcare system, it’s also a well-established fact that patients tend to do better when they can have influence over their own care.
Data can help to both identify cases of implicit bias and help hospitals track their progress toward remedying it.
Conclusion
Data is just the tip of the iceberg. Hospitals also need a robust infrastructure designed to support patients in their efforts to communicate with the hospital. For example, some people—particularly older patients—qualify for the services of a social worker. Healthcare social workers can help advocate for the patient while connecting them with all of the services they are qualified for.
Speech-language pathologists, counselors, and even ministers can all also play important roles in helping people get the healthcare they deserve. It’s pretty simple: Communication not only helps patients play an informed role in their own care but it also increases the odds of long-term success by making them active participants in the process.
