黑人病人比白人病人更可能住在病人安全状况更差的医院.pdfVIP

H EA L T H P O L I C Y C EN T ER Black Patients Are More Likely Than White Patients to Be in Hospitals with Worse Patient Safety Conditions Anuj Gangopadhyaya March 2021 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),1 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. Key Findings ◼ For 6 out of 11 patient safety indicators, including 5 out of 7 surgery-related patient safety indicators, Black patients