Explaining Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Use of High-Volume Hospitals: Decision-Making Complexity and Local Hospital Environments

Authors

Karl Kronebusch, CUNY Bernard M Baruch CollegeFollow
Bradford H. Gray, Urban Institute
Mark Schlesinger, Yale University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-14-2014

Abstract

Racial/ethnic minorities are less likely to use higher-quality hospitals than whites. We propose that a higher level of informationrelated complexity in their local hospital environments compounds the effects of discrimination and more limited access to services, contributing to racial/ethnic disparities in hospital use. While minorities live closer than whites to high-volume hospitals, minorities also face greater choice complexity and live in neighborhoods with lower levels of medical experience. Our empirical results reveal that it is generally the overall context associated with proximity, choice complexity, and local experience, rather than differential sensitivity to these factors, that provides a partial explanation of the disparity gap in highvolume hospital use.

Comments

This article was originally published in INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing, available at DOI: 10.1177/0046958014545575.

This article is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License.