Health care disparities as a health care quality management challenge.

Health care executives are accustomed to using a variety of comparative data from both within and outside their organization. Internal data commonly used include previous year data, to compare to the performance of the current year. External data used commonly include performance against industry benchmarks, such as HEDIS. It is hypothesized that another very useful source of data is an analysis of health care disparities. The focus can be placed on disparities among components of one's own organization, using internal organizational data. Another fruitful focus may be upon disparities between the health care environment within one's own organization and that in the local community.