Hospitals That Serve Many Black Patients Have Lower Revenues and Profits: Structural Racism in Hospital Financing.

BACKGROUND: Care for Black patients is concentrated at a relatively small proportion of all US hospitals. Some previous studies have documented quality deficits at Black-serving hospitals, which may be due to inequities in financial resources for care. OBJECTIVE: To assess disparities in funding between hospitals associated with the proportion of Black patients that they serve. PARTICIPANTS: All Medicare-participating hospitals, 2016-2018. MAIN MEASURES: Patient care revenues and profits per patient day at Black-serving hospitals (the top 10% of hospitals ranked by the share of Black patients among all Medicare inpatients) and at other hospitals, unadjusted and adjusted for differences in case mix and hospital characteristics. KEY RESULTS: Among the 574 Black-serving hospitals, an average of 43.7% of Medicare inpatients were Black, vs. 5.2% at the 5,166 other hospitals. Black-serving hospitals were slightly larger, and were more often urban, teaching, and for-profit or government (vs. non-profit) owned. Patient care revenues and profits averaged $1,736 and $-17 per patient day respectively at Black-serving hospitals vs. $2,213 and $126 per patient day at other hospitals (p<.001 for both comparisons). Adjusted for patient case mix and hospital characteristics, mean revenues were $283 lower/patient day (p<.001) and mean profits were $111/patient day lower (p<.001) at Black-serving hospitals. Equalizing reimbursement levels would have required $14 billion in additional payments to Black-serving hospitals in 2018, a mean of approximately $26 million per Black-serving hospital. CONCLUSIONS: US hospital financing effectively assigns a lower dollar value to the care of Black patients. To reduce disparities in care, health financing reforms should eliminate the underpayment of hospitals serving a large share of Black patients.

Inequality Set in Concrete: Physical Resources Available for Care at Hospitals Serving People of Color and Other U.S. Hospitals.

Racial inequities in health outcomes are widely acknowledged. This study seeks to determine whether hospitals serving people of color in the United States have lesser physical assets than other hospitals. With data on 4,476 Medicare-participating hospitals in the United States, we defined those in the top decile of the share of black and Hispanic Medicare inpatients as "black-serving" and "Hispanic-serving," respectively. Using 2017 Medicare cost reports and American Hospital Association data, we compared the capital assets (value of land, buildings, and equipment), as well as the availability of capital-intensive services at these and other hospitals, adjusted for other hospital characteristics. Hospitals serving people of color had lower capital assets: for example, US$5,197/patient-day (all dollar amounts in U.S. dollars) at black-serving hospitals, $5,763 at Hispanic-serving hospitals, and $8,325 at other hospitals (P < .0001 for both comparisons). New asset purchases between 2013 and 2017 averaged $1,242, $1,738, and $3,092/patient-day at black-serving, Hispanic-serving, and other hospitals, respectively (P < .0001). In adjusted models, hospitals serving people of color had lower capital assets (-$215,121/bed, P < .0001) and recent purchases (-$83,608/bed, P < .0001). They were also less likely to offer 19 of 27 specific capital-intensive services. Our results show that hospitals that serve people of color are substantially poorer in assets than other hospitals and suggest that equalizing investments in hospital facilities in the United States might attenuate racial inequities in care.

Effect of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid Expansions on Food Security, 2010-2016.

Objectives. To examine whether the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) decreased the prevalence of severe food insecurity.Methods. With data on adult respondents to the Food Security Supplement to the Current Population Survey in US states for the years 2010 to 2013 and 2015 to 2016, I used a difference-in-difference design to compare trends in very low food security (VLFS) among low-income childless adults in states that did and did not expand Medicaid in 2014 under the ACA.Results. Among low-income, nonelderly childless adults, VLFS rose from 17.4% before ACA to 17.5% after ACA in nonexpansion states, and fell from 17.6% to 15.9% in expansion states. In difference-in-difference analysis, Medicaid expansion was associated with a significant adjusted 2.2-percentage-point decline in rates of VLFS, equivalent to a 12.5% relative reduction.Conclusions. The improvement in food security after the ACA's health insurance expansion suggests that health insurance provision has spillover effects that reduce other dimensions of poverty.Public Health Implications. Providing free or low-cost health insurance coverage may free up household funds, reducing food insecurity and improving this important social determinant of health.