Blacks Hospitalized for COVID-19 Face Higher Odds of Death – AARP

To test that theory, the researchers ran simulations that showed there would have been no difference in mortality rates had Black patients gone to hospitals that treated disproportionately more white patients.

Our analyses tell us that if Black patients went to the same hospitals white patients do, and in the same proportions, we would see equal outcomes, Nazmul Islam, a statistician at OptumLabs who coauthored the study, said in a statement.

The study found that 1,450 Blacks (13.48 percent) died or were transferred to hospice care, compared with 4,304 whites (12.86 percent) who were admitted for COVID-19 at 1,188 hospitals across 41 states that had treated patients of both races. The simulation showed the rate for Black patients would have declined from the observed 13.48 percent to 12.23 percent.

Researchers who conducted the study suggest long-standing racial disparities have led to worse performing hospitals serving Black communities.

Because patients tend to go to hospitals near where they live, these new findings tell a story of racial residential segregation and reflect our countrys racial history that has been highlighted by the pandemic, study coauthor, David Asch, M.D., the executive director of Penn Medicines Center for Health Care Innovation, said in a statement.

Asch noted a National Community Reinvestment Coalition study that found economic hardships persist in many of the majority Black neighborhoods that experienced redlining (systemic denials of home loans) decades earlier.

In a Washington Post column, Asch and Werner wrote that hospitals located in poorer neighborhoods tend to treat more patients who are uninsured or insured by Medicaid with inadequate reimbursement rates.

In effect, doctors and hospitals in the United States are paid less to take care of Black patients than they are paid to take care of white patients. When we talk about structural racism in health care, this is part of what we mean, they wrote.

In an editorial in JAMA Network Open that accompanied the study, David W. Baker, M.D., agreed that a long legacy of structural racism has contributed to the financial challenges and limited resources faced by many hospitals in predominantly Black communities.

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Blacks Hospitalized for COVID-19 Face Higher Odds of Death - AARP