Scholars from the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania have published new research revealing inferior patient outcomes specifically related to nursing care in hospitals that predominately serve Black patients.
Nursing-sensitive indicators measure changes in patient health status directly affected by nursing care. To understand if Black-serving hospitals receive worse nursing care than other hospitals, the authors examined data from 3,101 hospitals from 2019 to 2022 regarding four key nursing-sensitive indicators: pressure ulcers, perioperative pulmonary embolus/deep vein thrombosis, postoperative sepsis, and failure to rescue – which refers to death following surgical complications.
According to their analysis, the authors found the rates for pressure ulcers, perioperative pulmonary embolus/deep vein thrombosis, and sepsis were high in Black-serving hospitals. There were no significant differences regarding rates of failure to rescue between these hospitals and others.
Notably, the research team found that Black-serving hospitals were slightly more likely than other hospitals to have a “Magnet” designation, which is a recognition bestowed by the American Nurses Credentialing Center to indicate a hospital has demonstrated a high standard of nursing excellence. This indicates that Black patient outcomes remain compromised even at hospitals with strong nursing resources, such as staffing and the work environment.
The authors conclude that this discordance between strong resources and poor patient outcomes in Black-serving hospitals suggests an urgent need for more research and immediate policy and management interventions.
In addition to scholars from Penn Nursing, the study included authors from the University of Texas at Arlington, Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania State University.
