New York City-based NYC Health + Hospitals and Houston-based Texas Children's Pavilion for Women were the 2022 recipients of the Bernard J. Tyson National Award for Excellence in Pursuit of Healthcare Equity from The Joint Commission and Kaiser Permanente.
NYC Health + Hospitals was honored for its initiative NYC Care. The initiative provided healthcare access for free or at a reduced cost. It enrolled more than 100,000 members, who made more than 264,000 primary care visits and 227,000 specialty visits between 2019 and February 2022. More than half of enrollees with diabetes or hypertension saw an improvement in symptoms within six months, according to a Nov. 8 news release shared with Becker's.
Texas Children's Pavilion for Women was recognized for its initiative called Quality Improvement Initiatives on Decreasing Racial Disparities in Maternal Morbidity. In 2019, the hospital discovered Black women had the highest rates of severe maternal morbidity from hemorrhage, according to the release.
The initiative added a medium risk factor for hemorrhage to Black patient records and included hemorrhage risk assessments, drills, active management and multidisciplinary review of serious hemorrhages. Once the initiative was put in place, there was no longer a significant disparity between white and Black women's deaths due to hemorrhage, and the rate of hemorrhage in Black women dropped by 14 percent, the release said.