ACP: Governmental Affairs and Public Policy - ACP Supports S. 4024, the "Minority Health Improvement and Health Disparity Elimination Act"

Advocacy

ACP Supports S. 4024, the "Minority Health Improvement and Health Disparity Elimination Act"

November 17, 2006

The Honorable Bill Frist
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Edward Kennedy
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Jeff Bingaman
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Barrack Obama
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senators Frist, Kennedy, Bingaman, and Obama:

On behalf of the American College of Physicians (ACP), representing 120,000 internal medicine physicians and medical students, I want to thank you for introducing S. 4024, the “Minority Health Improvement and Health Disparity Elimination Act.” As the largest medical specialty society and the second largest medical organization in the United States, ACP is committed to the elimination of disparities in healthcare access and quality. The College greatly appreciates your efforts to improve the health and health care of racial and ethnic minority and other health disparity populations.

The College is pleased that this legislation mandates enhanced cultural competency training for healthcare providers. The College recognizes clear communication between patients and providers as an essential component of the provider-patient relationship, affecting the quality of clinical encounters. Health care providers should understand and practice culturally competent care, including clear communication in all clinical encounters. Accordingly, the College supports cultural competency training that is incorporated in the training and development of all health care providers, at all levels.

The College also supports your endeavors to provide grants for the improvement of health care access and outreach to underserved populations, and to increase research that will result in the reduction of health care disparities. The College regards research to be a vital part of identifying, monitoring, and addressing disparities in healthcare that disadvantage racial/ethnic minorities. The College endorses the improved collection of data on race, ethnicity and primary language through use of reliable and standardized measurement tools.

The College applauds your effort to reauthorize the Health Research Services Administration health professions training programs under Title VII of the Public Health Service Act. The College considers a diverse workforce of health professionals an important part of eliminating disparities among racial and ethnic minorities, and supports continued and increased funding for programs and initiatives that work to increase the number of health care providers in minority communities.

In any legislation expanding health care access, it is imperative that quality indicators and performance measures be established to promote objective assessment of the effectiveness of care. The College believes that quality and efficiency measures should be developed through a transparent, multi-stakeholder process that considers scientific evidence, administrative feasibility of data collection, and resources from the National Quality Forum and the AQA (formerly Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance). The proposed provision directing the HHS Secretary to analyze data, adopt quality measures, and disseminate information to appropriate agencies and entities is unclear in its description of the patient populations for which quality measurement would be designed, and in its implications for health care providers.

We therefore strongly encourage you to clarify the process by which physicians and health care providers would be evaluated using quality indicators, and the patient population that would be covered by the quality measurement program. We also promote strong representation of physicians and other clinicians on the multi-stakeholder council advising the HHS Secretary on quality measure identification and adoption.

The College believes that the “Minority Health Improvement and Health Disparity Elimination Act” offers an opportunity to address healthcare disparities and inequities in a comprehensive, resolute manner. We look forward to working with you on the promotion of this legislation and its passage into law.

Sincerely,

Lynne M. Kirk, M.D., FACP President