It has long been known that racial disparities exist in health care. A large body of research has found that nonwhite patients have worse outcomes than whites. But it has been difficult to understand the underlying reasons for these disparities. Now a new study offers evidence that, at least in the case of bypass surgery, a significant but by no means complete portion of this disparity is due to decreased access among nonwhites to high quality hospitals.
In a paper published in JAMA Surgery, Govind Rangrass and colleagues analyzed Medicare data from 173,925 CABG patients. 8.6% of the study population was nonwhite. The mortality rate was 3.6% for the entire population. Nonwhite patients had a 34% increased risk of dying.
A key finding was that the third of hospitals that had the highest proportion of nonwhite patients (more than 17.7% nonwhite) also had the highest risk-adjusted mortality for both white and nonwhite patients (3.8% and 4.8%)….
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