Residents in predominantly Black communities are more likely than those in predominantly white communities to live near a hospital with a certified stroke center. But a new study shows that when residents in these Black communities have a stroke, they are at greater risk of receiving care at a less-resourced hospital, where their chances of recovery are slimmer.
In their retrospective study, researchers led by corresponding author Renee Hsia, MD, MSc, of the Department of Emergency Medicine at UC San Francisco, tracked patient demographics of general acute-care hospitals in the United States that offered stroke certification over a 10-year duration. Of the 4,984 hospitals, 961 were stroke certified in 2009, versus 1,763 in 2019, the researchers reported in their study publishing in JAMA Neurology on June 27, 2022.