Black patients are more likely than white patients to be in hospitals with worse patient safety conditions
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Author(s):
- Gangopadhyaya, Anuj, author Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, author.
- Contributor(s):
- Urban Institute, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Washington, DC : Urban Institute, March 2021
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- African Americans -- statistics & numerical data Healthcare Disparities -- statistics & numerical data Patient Harm -- statistics & numerical data Patient Safety -- statistics & numerical data Quality of Health Care -- statistics & numerical data Racism -- statistics & numerical data Whites -- statistics & numerical data United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- Black and white patients receive different standards of care in the United States. This was true when the Institute of Medicine published Unequal Treatment in 2003, identifying differences in care by patient race and laying out policy proposals and guidelines aimed at narrowing these differences (Institute of Medicine 2003), and this remains true today. In the 2019 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) disparities report, an annual assessment on disparities in medical care quality and access, Black patients received significantly worse quality of care relative to white patients in 82 out of 202 (or 40 percent of) quality measures (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality 2020). Identifying and reducing racial disparities in the quality of health care is a necessary (if insufficient) step toward reversing the effects of systemic racism on racial health inequities in America. This brief assesses the state of racial disparities in the quality of inpatient care using 11 AHRQ-developed patient safety quality indicators that measure rates of adverse patient safety events or hospital-acquired illnesses or injuries. Four of these measures center on general patient safety, and seven are related to risk of adverse events surrounding surgical procedures. This study investigates differences in Black and white patient safety measures using complete hospital discharge records from 26 states in 2017 and further examines whether some of these differences in patient safety quality between Black and white patients can be attributed to the hospitals into which they are admitted.
- 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 (23 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918316886406676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918316886406676