Background: Unconscious bias within the U.S. health care system has been linked with disparities in the treatment of patients by age, gender, and race (1). While many factors contribute to these disparities, implicit bias may play a significant role. Stigmatizing language often reflects the implicit bias that healthcare providers possess toward patients (2). Recent research […]

Background: Stigmatizing language in clinical notes can negatively impact physician attitudes, propagate bias, affect prescribing behaviors, and exacerbate healthcare disparities, yet remains prevalent even in the Open Notes era. Prior analyses of stigmatizing terms in clinical notes are limited by the lack of context in which terms are used and multiple meanings of certain words […]

Background: Patients with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) face multiple barriers to care and are at risk for worse health outcomes compared to similar patients with English Proficiency (EP). In sepsis, a common diagnosis and major cause of mortality in the US, the association of LEP with health outcomes has not been widely explored. We aimed […]

Background: The three most common childhood-onset chronic conditions for which adolescents and young adults (YA) use pediatric hospitals are congenital heart disease (CHD), cystic fibrosis (CF), and sickle cell disease (SCD). Existing studies do not establish clear clinical benefits to continued pediatric hospitalization over hospitalization at adult hospitals. We aimed to determine if if continued […]

Background: Structural inequities in healthcare are widespread and best documented in racial and income related inequalities to care. Prior studies show macro level differences in access to healthcare, insurance and medications as explanations for healthcare inequities. The opening of a second hospital in a suburban academic center with entirely private patient rooms presented a rare […]

Background: Increasingly, hospitalizations are becoming more complex and patients are frequently discharged from the hospital with new medical diagnoses, medications, and need for close follow up care (1,2). In 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act published meaningful use rules for using the Electronic Health Record (EHR), which included that the […]