When will the government and national agencies act to ensure that ethnicity coding in health records is fit for purpose?

When will the government and national agencies act to ensure that ethnicity coding in health records is fit for purpose? All governments in recent decades have committed to reducing health inequalities, including among ethnic minority groups. The pandemic’s disproportionate impact on ethnic minority communities highlighted the critical importance of being able to measure health care need, use and outcomes among ethnic minority groups, in order to both mitigate the impact of Covid-19 and address ethnic disparities in health more generally.

The analyses and research that followed illustrated the power of data to inform health strategies designed to protect and improve health. However, the caveat of poor quality of ethnicity coding in health records has been a constant theme, pre-dating the pandemic, requiring analysts to adjust for coding flaws prior to analysis or making do with sub-standard data quality. The King's Fund

See also:

• Understanding consistency of ethnicity data recorded in health-related administrative datasets in England: 2011 to 2021 Office for National Statistics