Struggling hospitals could help explain why so many Black patients have died of COVID-19

[Nevilledog]

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Stephanie M. Lee
@stephaniemlee
NEW: Struggling hospitals could help explain why so many Black patients have died of COVID-19, a new study says.

“This is the legacy of our nation’s racial history.”

Struggling Hospitals Could Explain Why So Many Black Patients Have Died Of COVID-19
For Black patients hospitalized with the coronavirus, the quality of the hospitals they are admitted to may play an outsize role in determining whether they survive.
buzzfeednews.com
8:34 AM · Jun 17, 2021

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/black-deaths-covid-hospitals-segregation


Of the more than 600,000 Americans who have died of COVID-19, a disproportionate number are Black. Growing research suggests that a key to understanding why lies in examining where many of them spent their final days: in the hospital.

A new study published on Thursday, and believed to be the largest of its kind so far, finds that for Black patients hospitalized with the coronavirus, the quality of the hospitals they are admitted to may play an outsize role in determining whether they survive. Hospitals mattered more than any other individual traits like age, income, or other medical conditions.

The study, published in JAMA Network Open, comes after a brutal year in which the coronavirus pandemic and a reinvigorated civil rights movement collided to highlight racial and economic disparities in healthcare. While the virus killed fewer people in white, wealthy enclaves, it crushed communities of color with low incomes — and the chronically underfunded, effectively segregated hospitals that served them. Black people account for about one-third of COVID-19 deaths in the US, even though they make up only about 13% of the population.

“It’s not surprising that Black patients may live [near] and therefore go to hospitals that have fewer financial resources and therefore have a harder time providing optimal care,” David Asch, a University of Pennsylvania professor of medicine who led the study, told BuzzFeed News. “There are a variety of elements of our historical past that have tended to create white neighborhoods and Black neighborhoods, rich neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods. This is the legacy of our nation’s racial history.”

*snip*

[lapfog_1]

1. It is going to be a large combination of circumstances

More minorities were employed as low paid essential workers in places (grocery stores, meat packing, mass transit, etc) that offered little protection.

They were conditioned by decades of employer pressure to keep working even if they felt sick (thus infecting other workers).

The health care system for poor people is much much worse than for upper middle class and more affluent people with better insurance.

I'm sure there are other contributing factors.