November 05, 2008
Insurance status and treatment in the ER
From Newsweek.com:
...[Adil] Haider and his colleagues analyzed almost 430,000 moderate to severe cases of traumatic injury (from auto accidents, gunshots and other causes) treated between 2001 and 2005. Controlling for age, gender, type and severity of injury, they found that, overall, uninsured patients were 50 percent more likely to die from their injuries than insured patients. Among white patients, the mortality rate for those with insurance was 4.2 percent, compared with 7.9 percent for the uninsured. The numbers for minorities were worse. Uninsured African-Americans died at more than double the rate of the insured, 11.4 percent to 4.9 percent. And while 6.3 percent of insured Hispanic patients died after traumatic injury, the rate for uninsured Hispanics was 11.3 percent.
The study also uncovered dramatic differences in survival rates for patients of different races and insurance status. When compared with an insured white patient, black patients with equivalent injuries but without insurance had a 78 percent higher risk of dying; for uninsured Hispanics, the risk was 130 percent higher.
You can find the rest of this story at Newsweek.com. The original study is published in the Archives of Surgery.
Posted by David Porter at 07:30 AM
Category: Health Disparities; Health Inequities; Uninsured; emergency care; insurance