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

Racial disparity in quality of PCI hospital observed among Medicare beneficiaries

Popescu I. Circulation. 2011;doi:10.1161/circulationaha.110.973628.

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

Researchers of a study appearing in Circulation have found that black Medicare beneficiaries are significantly less likely to undergo percutaneous coronary intervention in high-quality and revascularization hospitals compared with white beneficiaries.

The California and Iowa-based researchers performing the analysis pooled data from 1,244 US hospitals that had at least 50 black admissions in 2005. The 65,633 patients included in the study were either black (n=8,291) or white (n=57,342) and all had acute MI. Hospital quality was determined by a composite score composed of hospital risk-adjusted 30-day mortality and acute MI performance measures, with the top 20% designating high quality and the lowest 20% representing low quality.

Overall, blacks lived closer to revascularization (3.8 vs. 6.8 miles), high-quality (5.6 vs. 9.7 miles) and low-quality hospitals (25.5 vs. 36.9 miles; P<.001 for all three). After adjustment for distance, blacks had a significantly lower likelihood of being admitted to revascularization (RR=0.87) and high-quality hospitals (RR=0.88) while also having a higher likelihood of being admitted to low-quality hospitals (RR=1.17; P<.001 for all three).

Despite the study having several limitations, including lack of data on patient preferences and the inclusion of only white and black Medicare beneficiaries, the researchers wrote that the findings provide important information on factors contributing to racial disparities in acute MI treatment.

“The study confirms the role of differential access to hospitals with revascularization services and high quality of care as a plausible source of disparity,” they said. “However, racial differences in access to high-quality hospitals appear to be primarily driven not by race in itself, but by differences in where the majority of blacks and whites live and seek care. Effective policy recommendations aimed at reducing disparities need to take local socioeconomic and health care system factors into consideration.”

Follow CardiologyToday.com on Twitter.