News: Clinician bias negatively affects the quality of home healthcare, study shows

The care provided by home health clinicians is negatively impacted by their bias toward patients, according to a recent study conducted by the Columbia University School of Nursing. Judgmental language was used for 38% of patients, in 10% of all clinical notes, and was 14% more likely to be documented in notes referring to Black or Hispanic patients. Results found that home health clinicians spend an average of 21 fewer minutes with patients they used judgmental language in their documentation for, HealthLeaders reported.

Researchers used data from an urban home health organization that included 45,384 patients who received home healthcare services by the organization in 2019. The study defined the language of judgment as such that allows the clinician to distance themselves from the source of knowledge and question the speaker’s credibility, documenting words like “adamant,” “apparently,” “claims,” and “insists.”

The highest used of judgment language was found in Hispanic patient documentation (10.8% of all clinical notes), followed by Black patients (10.7%), white patients (9.5%), and Asian patients (7.8%). Around 25% of home health patients are part of a racial or ethnic minority population, the study states, which is why they argue the movement to diversify clinicians and remove bias is crucial to better healthcare.

“Because the language clinicians use in documentation is associated with the time spent providing care, further research is needed to study the impact of using judgment language on quality of home health care,” authors of the study concluded. “Policy, education, and clinical practice improvements are needed to address the biases behind judgment language.”

Editor’s note: To read HealthLeaders’ coverage of this story, click here. To read the Columbia study, click here.