Dive Brief:
- A new study published in JAMA Surgery concludes that low-income patients face higher operative mortality rates, not because of their socioeconomic standing, but rather because of the hospital that treats them.
- To better understand disparities in operative mortality, researchers from the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy examined 596,222 cases of patients that underwent various surgeries between 2003 to 2007. Researchers linked socioeconomic status to each ZIP code using 2000 U.S. Census data and compared data on operative mortality, postoperative complications and failure to rescue (FTR).
- Low-income patients demonstrated the highest increase in FTR rates, but hospital analysis revealed a higher FTR rate for all patients, regardless of socioeconomic status, at facilities that treated the largest proportion of low-income patients.
Dive Insight:
What could be the cause of the worsened outcomes at hospitals that treat high levels of low-income patients? Senior study author Amir Ghaferi, M.D., told Reuters Health that hospital and staff attitudes towards patient safety could be underlying factor. But the truth is that while these researchers may have found an important correlation -- between treatment of low-income patients and a facility's overall performance -- we still don't know why this correlation exists. All we can say for sure is that the proportion of low-income patients interacts with hospital performance in some way we don't yet understand.