This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Black patients on Medicare at least as likely as white patients to receive MI, CABG care at top-ranked hospitals

Popescu I. Arch Intern Med. 2010;170:1209-1215.

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

Compared with white patients, black patients on Medicare with coronary heart disease were equally or more likely to be admitted to top cardiac hospitals, according to data from a recent study.

The researchers aimed to examine racial differences in the access to high-quality medical centers in the United States. They identified the top hospitals using U.S. News & World Report’s annual “America’s Best Hospitals” ranking for 2002 through 2005. They identified all black and white Medicare patients with acute MI and CABG admitted to the top hospitals between 2002 and 2005. Researchers used multinomial conditional logit models to measure the distance from patients’ residences to available hospitals and estimated the correlation between race and admission to top hospitals.

Compared with whites, blacks with acute MI or those undergoing CABG were more likely to be admitted to top-ranked hospitals (10.5% vs. 18.3% for acute MI and 22.7% vs. 34.4% for CABG; P<.001). However, blacks were more likely to bypass the closest top-ranked hospitals compared with whites (25.8% vs. 14.7% for acute MI and 37.5% vs. 26.3% for CABG; P<.001).

According to distance models, blacks with acute MI were more likely to be admitted to top hospitals than whites (OR=1.12; 95% CI, 1.08-1.16), and blacks undergoing CABG were equally as likely as whites to be admitted to top hospitals (OR=1.05; 95% CI, 0.97-1.13). However, blacks living in socially disadvantaged ZIP codes who were undergoing CABG were less likely to receive care at top hospitals (OR=0.75; 95% CI, 0.64-0.86). The same patients were also more likely to bypass top hospitals closer to their homes (OR=1.16; 95% CI, 1.02-1.30).

“Rigorous examination of the interplay among the social determinants of cardiovascular health, traditional cardiovascular disease risk factors and genetics will need to be part of the research and clinical toolkit,” if racial and ethnic disparities are to be reduced, Michelle A. Albert, MD, said in an accompanying editorial. “In addition, both minority and nonminority researchers and caregivers must view translational research to improve care as a necessary step toward advancing science and building and maintaining a healthy population.”

Follow CardiologyToday.com on Twitter.