Diagnostic disparities and strategies for enhancing diagnostic equity in hospital medicine.
Raffel KE, Gershanik EF, Ranji SR. Diagnostic disparities and strategies for enhancing diagnostic equity in hospital medicine. J Hosp Med. 2025;20(1):71-74. doi:10.1002/jhm.13375.
Inequities can negatively affect a wide array of health care actions, including diagnosis. This commentary maps the components of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) diagnostic process framework with equity concerns to shape a method for examining disparities within hospital-based acute care diagnostic activities. The authors discuss the role of individual hospitalists and specialty leadership to address systemic diagnostic process weaknesses that result in patient harm.