Methodist North Hospital has been selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to participate in a new effort to improve the quality and equality of cardiac care delivered in hospitals to racial and ethnic minority populations. 

The Aligning Forces for Quality: Equity Quality Improvement Collaborative (Equity QI Collaborative) will identify and address racial and ethnic disparities in cardiac care, and test real-world solutions.

"Because we serve a large population of African-American and Hispanic patients, we were eager to participate in this effort," said Michael Ugwueke, CEO, Methodist North Hospital. "Nothing is more important to us than providing high-quality care to every patient we treat. We're proud of our record of care, and look forward to sharing our expertise with other hospitals nationwide and learning from them as well."

While we all know that the quality of health care is poor for many Americans, specific racial and ethnic groups continue to experience lower-quality health care when compared to white patients. Methodist North Hospital will work with other hospitals across the nation to test new ideas,  quantify results and share what it learns.

The Healthy Memphis Common Table will work to benchmark the hospitals' successes and spread the new quality improvement innovations across Memphis.