Hospital Policy and Practice Regarding the Collection of Data on Race, Ethnicity, and Birthplace

The US population has experienced dramatic increases in racial/ethnic diversity over the last several decades, particularly with immigration from Latin America and Asia.1–5 Research that uses race and ethnicity data provides an important foundation for designing programs to reduce health disparities.6 Birthplace, which serves as an indicator of migrant status, can be used to further identify subpopulations to be targeted for disease control and to provide more specific information on disease patterns. The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results cancer registries obtain data on race, Hispanic ethnicity, and birthplace primarily from hospital records.7 Because we have previously documented problems with the completeness and accuracy of these data in our registry,8–14 we were interested in assessing the policies and practices at the hospital level in the collection of patient data on race, ethnicity, and birthplace.