Transforming Cardiac Care

Hundreds of research studies have documented that patients from certain racial and ethnic groups are more likely to receive lower quality health care. These gaps in treatment, commonly referred to as "racial and ethnic disparities," persist across a range of health care services used to treat different conditions. The evidence of disparities was especially striking in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease.

Expecting Success, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is aimed at improving cardiac care for racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States. Using a collaborative Learning Network of 10 hospitals around the country, the initiative is developing and disseminating quality improvement strategies, models and resources to improve cardiac care for underserved minority populations in a variety of clinical settings.

Expecting Success focuses on the continuum of cardiovascular care delivered in inpatient and outpatient settings with four goals:

• To improve cardiovascular care for African Americans and Latinos;
• To develop effective, replicable quality-improvement strategies, models and resources;
• To encourage the spread of those strategies and models to clinical areas outside of cardiac care; and
• To share relevant lessons with health care providers and policy-makers.

Under the Expecting Success program, ten general acute care hospitals, selected on a competitive basis (including the hospital showcased in this Promise Story, Detroit's Sinai Grace) are participating in a 29-month long collaborative process to improve the quality of care for African Americans and Latinos with cardiovascular disease.

Sites work collaboratively to share potential quality improvement models, implementation strategies, and lessons learned. They also seek to spread innovations developed as a result of this project to other health care services provided by the hospital and community. Data collected and reported by each participating hospital is being shared among the sites.

Learn more about Program Area: Quality/Equality