Racial variations in processes of care for patients with community-acquired pneumonia.
BACKGROUND
Patients hospitalized with community acquired pneumonia (CAP) have a substantial risk of death, but there is evidence that adherence to certain processes of care, including antibiotic administration within 8 hours, can decrease this risk. Although national mortality data shows blacks have a substantially increased odds of death due to pneumonia as compared to whites previous studies of short-term mortality have found decreased mortality for blacks. Therefore we examined pneumonia-related processes of care and short-term mortality in a population of patients hospitalized with CAP.


METHODS
We reviewed the records of all identified Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized for pneumonia between 10/1/1998 and 9/30/1999 at one of 101 Pennsylvania hospitals, and randomly selected 60 patients at each hospital for inclusion. We reviewed the medical records to gather process measures of quality, pneumonia severity and demographics. We used Medicare administrative data to identify 30-day mortality. Because only a small proportion of the study population was black, we included all 240 black patients and randomly selected 720 white patients matched on age and gender. We performed a resampling of the white patients 10 times.


RESULTS
Males were 43% of the cohort, and the median age was 76 years. After controlling for potential confounders, blacks were less likely to receive antibiotics within 8 hours (odds ratio with 95% confidence interval 0.6, 0.4-0.97), but were as likely as whites to have blood cultures obtained prior to receiving antibiotics (0.7, 0.3-1.5), to have oxygenation assessed within 24 hours of presentation (1.6, 0.9-3.0), and to receive guideline concordant antibiotics (OR 0.9, 0.6-1.7). Black patients had a trend towards decreased 30-day mortality (0.4, 0.2 to 1.0).


CONCLUSIONS
Although blacks were less likely to receive optimal care, our findings are consistent with other studies that suggest better risk-adjusted survival among blacks than among whites. Further study is needed to determine why this is the case.
Division of General Internal Medicine, Audie L, Murphy VA Hospital, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, USA. mortensen@verdict.uthscsa.edu
Eric M
EM
Mortensen
John
J
Cornell
Jeff
J
Whittle
D001741:Black or African American / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use; D017714:Community-Acquired Infections / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000208:ethnology / Q000401:mortality / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D019983:Guideline Adherence; D017052:Hospital Mortality; D006761:Hospitals / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D007902:Length of Stay / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008297:Male; D006278:Medicare / Q000592:standards; D008875:Middle Aged; D010102:Oxygen Inhalation Therapy / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010414:Pennsylvania / Q000453:epidemiology; D011014:Pneumonia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000208:ethnology / Q000401:mortality / Q000628:therapy*; D017064:Process Assessment, Health Care; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D016019:Survival Analysis; D014481:United States; D044465:White People / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*
D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents