Do black and white patients experience similar rates of adverse safety events at the same hospital?
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Urban Institute research report
- Author(s):
- Gangopadhyaya, Anuj, author
- Contributor(s):
- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, issuing body. Urban Institute, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Washington, DC : Urban Institute, July 2021
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- African Americans -- statistics & numerical data Whites -- statistics & numerical data Healthcare Disparities -- statistics & numerical data Patient Harm -- statistics & numerical data Patient Safety -- statistics & numerical data Racism -- statistics & numerical data United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- Patient safety is “freedom from accidental injury due to medical care or medical errors” (IOM 2000) and represents a fundamental domain of inpatient quality of care. Hospital-acquired illnesses and injuries have direct consequences on patient health and erode the trust patients place in providers and health systems. Our recent Urban Institute analysis found that in the 26 states with available data for 2017, Black adult patients experienced higher rates of hospital-acquired injuries or illnesses than white patients and that some of these differences in patient safety can be attributed to differences in the quality of hospitals that Black patients are admitted to relative to white patients (Gangopadhyaya 2021). A related but unresolved research question is whether Black and white patients experience similar rates of adverse patient safety events when admitted to the same hospital. Investigating within-hospital racial differences in patient safety is critical to understanding what progress, if any, has been made in improving racial equity in health care. Moreover, policies intended to remedy racial inequities in the quality of the hospitals patients are admitted to, discussed in Gangopadhyaya (2021), could be ineffective if racial differences in patient safety risks persist even when patients are admitted to the same hospital. Examining within-hospital differences in Black and white adult patient safety risks is the central focus of this study. We assess racial disparities in the quality of inpatient care using 11 patient safety indicators that measure rates of adverse patient safety events of hospital-acquired illnesses or injuries. Four of these measures center on general patient safety, and seven center on adverse events surrounding surgical procedures. This study investigates differences in Black and white patient safety using hospital discharge records from 26 states in 2017 and examines whether these differences narrow when comparing Black and white patients within the same hospital. We further assess whether these within-hospital differences in Black and white patient safety indicators persist when comparing patients with similar types of insurance coverage. Finally, we investigate whether inequities in patient safety by race differ in hospitals that serve more Black patients or more private paying patients as a share of all patients.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-DC license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (iv, 29 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918300878506676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918300878506676