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Health Care Reform Improved Access to Inpatient Procedures Among Minorities in Massachusetts
These findings are being presented today at the annual Society of General Internal Medicine annual meetings in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Since Massachusetts became the first state in 2006 to enact health care reform, sharply expanding health coverage to all its citizens, no studies have examine whether expanded insurance coverage has improved access to specific elective inpatient procedures among minorities.
Using information from 2004-2008, the BUSM researchers analyzed Massachusetts hospital inpatient discharge data on 2,656,554 white patients, 195,481 black patients, and 172,852 Hispanic patients, looking specifically at a number of cardiovascular, cancer and musculoskeletal procedures that are most often scheduled by physicians and therefore likely to be sensitive to insurance status. These procedures are also traditionally underutilized among minorities.
The researchers found that use of some surgeries among minorities increased significantly following the introduction of reform in 2006. Higher rates of increase for minorities were found when compared with similar rates for whites, and when compared with their trend prior to reform. Between 2007 and 2008, use of some musculoskeletal procedures went up by 17 percent for blacks, nine percent for Hispanics and five percent for whites; these rates increased over similar rates in the pre-reform period for blacks and Hispanics, but not for whites. Use of some cardiovascular surgeries also grew faster among blacks and Hispanics.
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