An analysis of racial inequities in emergency department triage among patients with stroke-like symptoms in the United States

• Published in: BMC emergency medicine Vol. 23; no. 1; p. 90
• Main Authors: Neves, Gabriel, DeToledo, John, Morris, James, Xu, K Tom
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 14.08.2023; BioMed Central; BMC
• Subjects: Analysis; Emergency department; Emergency service; Hospitals; Physician evaluation times; Racial inequities; Stroke; Stroke (Disease); Stroke patients; Surveys; Physician evaluation times; Racial inequities; Stroke; Emergency department
• ISSN: 1471-227X; 1471-227X
• DOI: 10.1186/s12873-023-00865-z

Racial inequities exist in treatment and outcomes in patients with acute stroke. Our objective was to determine if racial inequities exist in the time-lapse between patient presentation and provider assessment in patients with stroke-like symptoms in Emergency Departments (ED) across the U.S. This study is a retrospective, observational study of the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) 2014-2018. We identified visits with stroke-like symptoms and stratified the proportion of door-to-provider (DTP) times by racial groups. We used broad and narrow definitions of stroke-like symptoms. We performed bivariate and multivariate analyses using race and clinical and demographic characteristics as covariates. Between 2014-2018, there were an average of 138.58 million annual ED visits. Of the total ED visits, 0.36% to 7.39% of the ED visits presented with stroke-like symptoms, and the average DTP time ranged from 39 to 49 min. The proportion of the visits with a triage level of 1 (immediate) or 2 (emergent) ranged from 16.03% to 23.27% for stroke-like symptoms. We did not find statistically significant racial inequities in DTP or ED triage level. We found significantly longer DTP times in non-Hispanic blacks (15.88 min, 95% CI: 4.29-27.48) and Hispanics (by 14.77 min, 95% CI: 3.37-26.16) than non-Hispanic whites that presented with atypical stroke-like symptoms. We observed that non-Hispanic whites were significantly more diagnosed with a stroke/TIA than other racial minority groups (p = 0.045) for atypical stroke-like symptoms. In our population-based analysis, we did not identify systemic racial inequities in the DTP times or ED triage level at ED triage for stroke-like symptoms.