INTRODUCTION The purpose of this study is to analyze national and institutional trends in shoulder arthroplasty utilization by race. METHODS The Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) was analyzed to determine racial trends in shoulder arthroplasty utilization nationally. An institutional database was then utilized to retrospectively identify all patients undergoing shoulder arthr...

Deaths of children due to neglected dental diseases have put the issue of access to care by minorities at the forefront of dental public health discussions. We evaluated the trends in dental service utilization in relation to racial disparities and other factors using Medicaid enrollment and claims data from 1990 to 1997 for Alabama children 19 years of age and younger (N=512,049). Alabama Medi...

BACKGROUND All published studies of health care utilization in gout have been cross-sectional to date, and most used a patient-reported diagnosis of gout. Our objective was to assess health care utilization and its predictors in patients with physician-confirmed gout in a prospective cohort study. METHODS In a multi-center prospective cohort study of U.S. veterans with rheumatologist-confirme...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Previous studies have demonstrated that socioeconomic disparities in the treatment of cerebrovascular diseases exist. We studied a large administrative data base to study disparities in the utilization of mechanical thrombectomy for acute ischemic stroke. MATERIALS AND METHODS With the utilization of the Perspective data base, we studied disparities in mechanical thromb...

OBJECTIVE Primary: To examine Veterans Administration (VA) utilization and other potential mediators between racial/ethnic differentials and mortality in veterans diagnosed with traumatic brain injury (TBI). DESIGN A national cohort of veterans clinically diagnosed with TBI in 2006 was followed from January 1, 2006 through December 31, 2009 or until date of death. Utilization was tracked for ...

Information technology (IT) is a key mechanism for improving the quality of healthcare and containing costs, but racial differences in the utilization of IT among practicing physicians are unknown. The current study, using a national physician survey (n = 6,628), investigated racial differences in the utilization of IT. White physicians and minority physicians were directly compared. We first c...

There exist many disconnects between the mental and general health care sectors. However, a goal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 is to change this by improving insurance access and the intersection of mental and general health care. As insurance status intersects with race, the present study examines how race, insurance status, and hospital mental health services utilization differ acr...

BACKGROUND Alcoholic Hepatitis (AH) is major source of alcohol-related mortality and health care expenditures in the United States. There is insufficient information regarding the role of race and ethnicity on healthcare utilization and outcomes for patients with AH. We aimed to determine whether there are racial/ethnic differences in resource utilization and inpatient mortality in patients hos...

PURPOSE A cohort of pediatric patients with AML treated at hospitals contributing to the Pediatric Health Information System was used to evaluate differences in opioid utilization by sex, age, race, and insurance. METHODS Billing data were used to compute the prevalence of opioid exposure and to quantify rates of utilization among those exposed to opioids as days of use per 1000 inpatient day...