Despite a provision within the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that requires health plans to collect patient information on race, ethnicity and language, that data is still missing among federal and commercial payers.
As of 2015, half of Medicaid plans and nearly three-quarters of Medicare plans had complete or partially complete data on race, according to a study published in Health Affairs. Data on ethnicity and spoken language was less prevalent among federal plans, with fewer than half of Medicare and Medicaid plans reporting complete or partially complete data. Similar rates were reported for spoken language data.
