As part of its efforts to promote equity in healthcare, YNHHS has shared additional steps to reduce bias in Patient Care Decision Support (PCDS) tools.
These tools consist of calculations and algorithms used to determine clinical decisions. Some PCDS tools factor in race, ethnicity, sex, age and disability to prescribe treatment and procedures to patients.
A section of the Affordable Care Act established to ensure equal access to care requires healthcare institutions receiving federal financial assistance (such as Medicare and Medicaid) to make reasonable efforts to identify and mitigate the risk of discrimination related to PCDS tools by May 1.
The extra steps YNHHS has taken mean “our care teams will have access to consensus-based guidelines on how to mitigate, substitute or eliminate decision support tools that include race or ethnicity,” said Lou Hart, MD, pediatrician, Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, and assistant professor of Pediatrics, Yale School of Medicine. “Patients will benefit from high-quality, safe and equitable treatment protocols, leading to better trust between them and clinicians.”
The complete suite of the PCDS tools ‘Section 1557 PCDS’ is in Agile Pathways, via Epic or on the Agile MD website for read-only access.
