To Keep Us on Track: An Equity Dashboard for the Pediatric Emergency Department

Measuring health care disparities is essential for achieving equity, yet these efforts are often limited to isolated projects. To drive meaningful and sustained change, disparities must be systematically measured and integrated into health care operations. Equity dashboards offer a powerful tool for visualizing disparities, identifying gaps, and guiding interventions. We developed an operational equity dashboard for a pediatric emergency department (PED) to integrate equity metrics into routine decision-making and quality improvement efforts.

A multidisciplinary team created an interactive dashboard using the business intelligence tool Power BI. The dashboard aggregates electronic health record data and employs statistical process control charts to track key operational metrics over time. To identify equity gaps, filters stratify data by race, ethnicity, and language, and other variables.

The dashboard identified that Hispanic patients waited 12 minutes longer to see a provider than non-Hispanic patients (78 vs 66 minutes), whereas Spanish-speaking patients waited 15 minutes longer than English-speaking patients (81 vs 66 minutes). Disparities were observed primarily among lower-acuity patients; no significant differences were found among higher-acuity patients.

This equity dashboard embeds health equity considerations into PED operations, enabling real-time identification of disparities and supporting targeted interventions. Operationalizing equity within ED workflows is a crucial step toward advancing equitable pediatric emergency care.