Do low-income coronary artery bypass surgery patients have equal opportunity to access excellent quality of care and enjoy good outcome in Taiwan?

International Journal for Equity in Health

Kuo-Piao Chung²  Yu-Chang Hou¹  Tsung-Hsien Yu² 

[1]Department of Bioscience Technology, Chuan-Yuan Christian University, Taoyuan, Taiwan

[2]Institute of Healthcare Policy and Management, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

关键词: CABG;    Patterns of care;    Health inequity;    Quality of care;   

Others  :  1146422
DOI  :  10.1186/s12939-014-0064-8

 received in 2014-03-12, accepted in 2014-07-06,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Equity is an important issue in the healthcare research field. Many studies have focused on the relationship between patient characteristics and outcomes of care. These studies, however, have seldom examined whether patients¿ characteristics affected their access to quality healthcare, which further affected the care outcome. The purposes of this study were to determine whether low-income coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) patients receive healthcare services with poorer quality, and if such differences in treatment result in different outcomes.

Methods

A retrospective multilevel study design was conducted using claims data from Taiwan¿s universal health insurance scheme for 2005-2008. Patients who underwent their CABG surgery between 2006 and 2008 were included in this study. CABG patients who were under 18 years of age or had unknown gender or insured classifications were excluded. Hospital and surgeon¿s performance indicators in the previous one year were used to evaluate the level of quality via k-means clustering algorithm. Baron and Kenny¿s procedures for mediation effect were conducted to explore the relationship among patient¿s income, quality of CABG care, and inpatient mortality.

Results

A total of 10,320 patients were included in the study. The results showed that 5.65% of the low-income patients received excellent quality of care, which was lower than that of patients not in the low-income group (5.65% vs.11.48%). The mortality rate of low-income patients (12.10%) was also higher than patients not in the low-income group (5.25%). Also, the mortality of patients who received excellent care was half as low as patients receiving non-excellent care (2.63% vs. 5.68%). Finally, after the procedure of mediation effect testing, the results showed that the relationship between patient income level and CABG mortality was partially mediated by patterns of quality of care.

Conclusions

The results of the current study implied that worse outcome in low-income CABG patients might be associated with poorer quality of received services. Health authorities should pay attention to this issue, and propose appropriate solutions.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Yu et al.; licensee BioMed Central

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

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