A review of records shows Yale New Haven Hospital’s mortality rate was 34% lower than the national average during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Also notable is that the mortality rate was the same across all racial and ethnic groups — which doctors said was not typical for most hospital systems.
Dr. Benjamin Mba, the vice chair of DEI in the Yale Department of Internal Medicine, credits a health equity plan that was adopted early on.
“Yale created algorithms, objective algorithms, to handle patients at every single center, to handle patients in the same way, to get the same treatment,” Mba said. “And we postulate that some of that adherence to algorithms actually removed some implicit bias that may have come in from providers.”
Removal of that implicit bias, Mba said, resulted in a more equitable approach to health care.
“Even though people came into the Yale hospital system with COVID and came from different socioeconomic backgrounds and different racial and ethnic identities, leaving the hospital, the outcomes were the same across all comers,” Mba said.
Yale New Haven Health and the School of Medicine hosted a summit on Wednesday to share their strategies.
Mba said the event allowed medical professionals to share how they’re implementing strategies across all kinds of medical centers to improve health equity outcomes.
“The COVID pandemic further unmasked significant health and health care disparities in society that had already existed,” Mba said. “But the pandemic also demonstrated that healthcare systems and academic medical centers can achieve equitable health outcomes with intentional strategies that are integrated at multiple levels.”
