Admissions for CABG Procedure in the Elderly: Was There a Change in Access to Teaching Hospitals After 1997?

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to identify patient attributes associated with teaching hospital admissions in the elderly for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), and to determine whether admission patterns in teaching hospitals by vulnerable subgroups of the elderly changed during 1997 to 2001, a period with significant changes in CABG admission patterns and financial situation faced by teaching hospitals. The study sample comprises elderly residents in two states, New York and Pennsylvania, and uses Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State Inpatient data of the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. Patient characteristics in major teaching hospitals are compared with those in rest of hospitals in a logistic regression framework using a pre-/postdesign, and controlling for county characteristics and resources, distance to hospitals, and hospital size and volume of procedures. Significant patient characteristics associated with a higher likelihood of admission to teaching hospitals included racial/ethnic minority status, transfer cases, Medicaid and private health maintenance organization insurance. A lower volume of CABG cases and an increased propensity to admit more complex cases characterized the admission patterns in teaching hospitals during 1997 to 2001. Although higher use of teaching hospitals by racial/ethnic minorities persisted, access for Medicaid patients disproportionately declined.

KEYWORDS:

• Elderly
• access
• health care organization
• hospital performance
• cardiac procedure

Notes

This article not subject to U.S. copyright law.

This research is funded wholly by the author's employer, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The views expressed in this article are those of the author. No official endorsement by any agency of the federal government is intended or should be inferred. The author would like to thank Anne Elixhauser, PhD, AHRQ, and Bernard Friedman, PhD, AHRQ, for their careful review of the draft. The author also likes to acknowledge the state data organizations that participated in the HCUP State Inpatient Databases: New York State Department of Health; Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council.

*significant at p < .01

**significant at p < .05.

^aExcludes Medicare-Medicaid dually eligible beneficiaries.

**Significant at p < .05.