Are Black-White Mortality Rates Converging? Acute Myocardial Infarction in the United States, 1993–2010
Racial and socioeconomic disparities are pervasive in U.S. health care. Recent research on trends in disparities has often shown a reduction in the magnitude of disparities in treatments. In this paper, we consider trends in racial disparities with a focus on health outcomes for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in the elderly population. We find an overall decline in mortality between 1999 and 2010, but it was not associated with a reduction either in mortality differentials within hospitals, nor did we observe a significant reduction in mortality disparities associated with black AMI patients being admitted to hospitals with disproportionately high risk-adjusted mortality rates for whites. While there was some hint of a reduction in racial disparities between the middle (1999–2005) and late (2006–10) period, the improvement is very modest, and additional years of data would be necessary to discern whether there was a real long-term improvement.
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