Have Racial Disparities in Ambulatory Care Sensitive Admissions Abated Over Time?

BACKGROUND: Racial disparities in access to care and access to high-quality care have been persistent over many decades. They have been documented in all areas of health care, including ambulatory care. Policy initiatives have been implemented to address disparities and close the gaps in care that minorities face. Less is known about the effectiveness of these polices. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate whether disparities in quality of ambulatory care have abated during the decade of 2000 by answering 2 questions: (1) were there differences in ambulatory care sensitive hospital admissions rates by race?; (2) have these differences been declining over time? RESEARCH DESIGN: Multivariable linear regressions with fixed county effects and robust SEs of longitudinal panel data. SUBJECTS: A total of 4,032,322 discharges in 172 counties in 6 states during 2003-2009. MEASURES: Prevention Quality Indicators (PQIs) developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, by county, and race calculated from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project dataset. RESULTS: In 2003 the overall PQI admission rates were higher for African Americans (around 16.5/1000) than for whites (around 15/1000). By 2009, the overall and the chronic PQI admission rates declined significantly (P<0.01) for whites. They either did not decline or increased for African Americans. Acute PQI rates declined significantly for whites and remained stable for African Americans. CONCLUSIONS: Policies addressing persisting racial disparities in quality of ambulatory care for African Americans should focus on the chronic PQIs. In addition, efforts should be made to improve data quality for race and ethnicity information on hospital discharge data to enable informed policy evaluation and planning.