Promoting health equity for deaf patients through the electronic health record

AbstractLanguage status can be conceptualized as an equity-relevant variable, particularly for non-English-speaking populations. Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals who use American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate comprise one such group and are understudied in health services research. DHH individuals are at high-risk of receiving lower-quality care due to ineffective patient –provider communication. This perspective outlines barriers to health equity research serving DHH ASL-users due to systems developed by large-scale informatics networks (eg, the Patient-Centered Clinical Outcomes Research Network), and institutional policies on self-serve cohort discovery tools. W e list potential to help adequate capture of language status of DHH ASL-users to promote health equity for this population.
Source: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association - Category: Information Technology Source Type: research