MONDAY, June 4, 2007 (HealthDay News) -- White kids are admitted to hospital after an emergency room visit at a greater rate than black or Hispanic kids, new research reveals.
That doesn't mean minority children are being denied needed care. In fact, they are being admitted to hospitals at rates that conform to expected guidelines. But white kids are probably being admitted to hospitals when they don't need it, the study authors said.
"So the good news is that blacks and Hispanics are not being denied essential admissions when they need it," said study lead author Dr. James M. Chamberlain, a pediatrics and emergency medicine professor at George Washington University School of Medicine.
"But the bad news is that white patients are being over-admitted to the hospital when they don't really need it," he added.
Reported in the June issue of the journal Pediatrics, the findings show that minimally ill white children are being admitted to a hospital after an emergency room visit at 1.5 to 2 times the rate of either black or Hispanic children.
Chamberlain and his team analyzed pediatric ER admission rates of almost 9,000 white, black, and Hispanic children seeking care over the course of a little more than a year at one of 13 hospitals.
By reviewing patient demographics and diagnosis records, the researchers found that white children were more likely to be admitted through the ER with minor injuries.
Defining hospital admission as being brought into an inpatient unit or observation area for 12 hours or more, the researchers also found that children with the most severe injuries or illnesses were admitted pretty much equally across the board, regardless of race or ethnicity.
While the study authors suggested their research could be the first to reveal racial disparities in pediatric ER admission settings, they emphasized that the study added to growing evidence that race plays a role in health care.
With that in mind, the study authors called for more research, acknowledging that their current work focused on identifying the problem rather than explaining the underlying cause.
"But our speculation is that there is pressure from both parents and hospital administrators to admit kids when they're not really sick," said Chamberlain, who also serves as the division chief of emergency medicine at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. "We didn't study this. It's just speculation. But from our everyday experience here in D.C., that's what we think might be happening."
"And that's a waste of resources," he added. "And it exposes them [children] to infectious diseases and other risks from being hospitalized. More health care is not always better."
The notion that less may be more with hospital admissions was seconded by Dr. Marion Sills, an emergency department physician at The Children's Hospital of Denver.
"Here the minority children who are less ill get less care, but that's the appropriate decision," Sills said.
"Getting admitting to the hospital is not an entirely benign affair," she added. "You can catch an infection, there's school disruption, parents miss work to be at the hospital, children's sleep cycles go off -- it's a very stressful situation. So an unnecessary and avoidable hospitalization is a very big deal and not a very good thing. Which is why I applaud this study. It's very important work."
More information
For more on preparing for emergency room visits, check with the Ohio Legal Rights Service.
