This toolkit provides practical tools and guidance to those interested in improving the quality of their hospital patient race, ethnicity, and primary language (R/E/L) data collection efforts. The toolkit is designed for statewide data organizations that collect hospital administrative data, such as those participating in AHRQ’s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project. However, the toolkit may also be useful for a variety of others with a role in improving the collection of R/E/L in hospital data, such as hospital leadership, quality improvement personnel, clinicians, patients and consumers, registration and admitting departments, and hospital IT departments.

The toolkit is based on the materials developed by, and the experiences of, three AHRQ Enhanced State Data grantees from California, New Mexico, and the Northwest region (Idaho, Oregon, and Washington) that embarked on R/E/L data quality improvement projects. Enhancements included making substantial, sustainable improvements to the reporting of R/E/L data among patients in California’s hospitals; improving the quality of race and ethnicity data in hospital discharge databases by revising the New Mexico administrative code to mandate race, ethnicity, and tribal identifier data reporting; and conducting record linkages with an array of health-related data systems in a three-state region in the Pacific Northwest to identify and, in some cases, augment racial misclassification and improve disease/mortality estimates.

• The Case for Improving Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data
  
• Data Improvement through Education and Training of Hospital Staff
  
• Data Improvement through Data Linkages and Data Validation
  
• About the Grants (includes tools developed by each grantee)