Racial differences in COVID mortality rates linked to unequal hospital quality

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Emmanuel Felton
@emmanuelfelton
Many have attributed higher COVID-19 mortality rates for Black people to comorbidities like diabetes, but a new study found if Black patients had access to the same hospitals white patients did, the Black-white mortality difference would have disappeared

Racial differences in COVID mortality rates linked to unequal hospital quality
Researchers looked at 10 months of data from more than 44,000 Medicare patients from 1,188 hospitals in 41 states and the District of Columbia.
whyy.org
8:40 PM · Jul 4, 2021

https://whyy.org/articles/racial-differences-in-covid-mortality-rates-linked-to-unequal-hospital-quality-penn-study-shows/


Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, clinicians and health systems have observed noticable differences in COVID-19 outcomes by race. According to recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American communities are more likely to contract the coronavirus, to be hospitalized because of the virus, and to have an increased risk of death from the virus when compared to their white counterparts.

David Asch, executive director of Penn Medicine’s Center for Health Care Innovation, says he and his colleagues had conducted studies showing how the kind of hospital a person was admitted to could determine how likely the person was to recover from the virus.

“And we wondered whether that same phenomenon might help explain why there were racial differences in mortality,” Asch said.

Data shows that Black, Hispanic, and Asian American communities are disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus compared to their white counterparts.
Data shows that Black, Hispanic, and Asian American communities are disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus compared to their white counterparts. (CDC)
In other words, was it possible that Black patients did worse than white patients because they were admitted to hospitals that provided worse care for all?

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