An analysis of racial inequities in emergency department triage among patients with stroke-like symptoms in the United States
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 s...
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Published in | BMC emergency medicine Vol. 23; no. 1; p. 90 |
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Main Authors | , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
England
BioMed Central Ltd
14.08.2023
BioMed Central BMC |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | 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. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 ObjectType-Undefined-3 |
ISSN: | 1471-227X 1471-227X |
DOI: | 10.1186/s12873-023-00865-z |