Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Preventable Hospitalizations for Chronic Disease: Prevalence and Risk Factors

Abstract

Hospitalizations due to ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSCs) result in high morbidity and economic burden on the American healthcare system. Admissions due to chronic ACSCs, in particular, cost the American healthcare system over 30 billion dollars annually. This paper presents the current research on racial and ethnic disparities in the burden of hospitalizations due to chronic ACSCs. For this narrative review, we evaluated over 800 abstracts from MEDLINE and Google Scholar and cited 62 articles. Since 1998, racial and ethnic disparities in hospitalizations from chronic ACSCs have increased resulting in over 430,000 excess hospitalizations among non-Hispanic Blacks compared to non-Hispanic Whites. Racial disparities in chronic ACSCs hospitalizations are pervasive in the USA. There is need for more research on the pathways through which an individual's race modifies the risk for hospitalizations due to chronic ACSCs.