ArticleHealth equity2018
Evidence of Racial and Geographic Disparities in the Use of Medicare Observation Stays and Subsequent Patient Outcomes Relative to Short-Stay Hospitalizations.
Article in Health equity, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Association of Observation Stays with Clinical Outcomes and Costs in Medicare: An Instrumental Variable Analysis.Journal of general internal medicine · 2025Article
- Trends in observation stays for Medicare beneficiaries with and without Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2024Article
- Is every day at home a good day?Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2022Article
- Thirty-Day Re-observation, Chronic Re-observation, and Neighborhood Disadvantage.Mayo Clinic proceedings · 2020Article
- What Is an Observation Stay? Evaluating the Use of Hospital Observation Stays in Medicare.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2020Observational
- Avoidable Hospitalizations And Observation Stays: Shifts In Racial Disparities.Health affairs (Project Hope) · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeTo examine racial and geographic disparities in the use of-and outcomes associated with-Medicare observation stays versus short-stay hospitalizations.
methodsWe used 2007-2010 fee-for-service Medicare claims, including 3,555,994 observation and short-stay hospitalizations for individuals over age 65. We estimated linear probability models with hospital fixed effects to identify within-facility disparities in observation stay use, and estimated in-hospital mortality, and 30- and 90-day post-discharge mortality, return ED visits, and hospital readmissions as a function of placement in observation using linear probability models, propensity-score matching, and interaction terms.
resultsWe identified racial and geographic disparities in the likelihood of observation stay use within hospitals (blacks 3.9 percentage points more likely than whites, rural 5.4 percentage points less likely than urban). Observation is associated with an increased likelihood of returning to the ED within 30 or 90-days, and a decreased likelihood of readmission or mortality, but there are racial and geographic disparities in these outcomes.
conclusionWhile observation generally results in improved outcomes, disparities in these outcomes and the use of observation stays within hospitals are concerning, and may be driven by clinical and non-clinical factors.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.