OVERVIEW: Poor health care quality impacts employers financially in two major areas — direct costs of health care and indirect costs related to absenteeism, turnover, and reduced productivity. Also, studies have also shown that members of racial/ethnic minority groups disproportionately experience lower-quality health care than Whites. Identifying these gaps in quality and disparities in care and designing appropriate interventions should lead to both short- and long-term savings for employers.

A new issue brief illustrates how King County was able to obtain data on race and ethnicity, and then link that data, as well as data on absenteeism and productivity, with claims data. This provided the ability to determine the quality of care their employees receive, as well as whether inequalities in health care directly affect outcomes and indirect costs.

Read the issue brief