Medical Care Plagued by Racial Disparity

A new study has elucidated the fact that Black Patients, who have had a heart attack, are less likely to undergo a bypass surgery, also known as revascularization, as compared to their White vis-à-vises.

The study was conducted to bring about the point that racial disparities occur in the health care system. However, some researchers snub away this view, urging that hospital revascularization service may account for this difference.

"We found some significant differences, and definitely, we have no good explanation for why," said lead researcher Dr. Ioana Popescu, health services researcher at Iowa City VA Medical Center. "More research needs to be done."

Dr. Ioana Popescu analyzed a large data of over 1.2 million Medicare donees and tried to figure out if race plays a part in the health care system or not. The exhaustive study studied whether a hospital revascularization service affected the rates of revascularization by race. A total of 4,627 US hospitals with or devoid of this service were incorporated in the investigation.

The study, whose findings came into view in the Journal of the American Medical Association, show that 31% of the white patients were admitted to hospitals rendering revascularization services as compared to just 25.2% of black patients.

It was also found out that the revascularization rate of the whites, when they entered the hospitals rendering this service, was 50.2%, and 25.9% when they were admitted to the hospitals sans these services.

As far as the black patients were concerned, the mortality rate, as well as the revascularization rate showed immense differences. For those admitted in the centers with the service, the revascularization rates were 34.3% and for those admitted to centers lacking these services, the rate was 18.3%

The mortality rate of the black patients was 35.3% and 39.7% respectively. The whites, on the other hand, had the corresponding mortality rate of 30.2% and 37.6%.

Thorough analysis by the researchers showed that the mortality rate was lower among the blacks for the first 30 days after admission, but after this period, the rate of mortality increased among the blacks.

“As more information on the benefits of revascularization in different patient subgroups becomes available, efforts to standardize the treatment protocols for heart attack patients and to aggressively treat patient risk factors are important to eliminate these racial differences in patient care”, the authors conclude.