Abstract
BACKGROUND: Widespread attention to structural racism has heightened interest in disparities in the quality of care delivered to racial/ethnic minorities and other vulnerable populations. These groups may also be at increased risk of patient safety events.
OBJECTIVE: To examine differences in inpatient patient safety events for vulnerable populations defined by race/ethnicity, insurance status and limited English proficiency (LEP).
DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study.
SETTING: Single tertiary care academic medical centre.
PARTICIPANTS: Inpatient admissions of those aged ≥18 years from 1 October 2014 to 31 December 2018.
MEASUREMENTS: Primary exposures of interest were self-identified race/ethnicity, Medicaid insurance/uninsured and LEP. The primary outcome of interest was the total number of patient safety events, defined as any event identified by a modified version of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement global trigger tool that automatically identifies patient safety events ('automated') from the electronic record or by the hospital-wide voluntary provider reporting system ('voluntary'). Negative binomial models were used to adjust for demographic and clinical factors. We also stratified results by automated and voluntary.
RESULTS: We studied 141 877 hospitalisations, of which 13.6% had any patient safety event. In adjusted analyses, Asian race/ethnicity was associated with a lower event rate (incident rate ratio (IRR) 0.89, 95% CI 0.83 to 0.96); LEP patients had a lower risk of any patient safety event and voluntary events (IRR 0.91, 95% CI 0.87 to 0.96; IRR 0.89, 95% CI 0.85 to 0.94). Asian and Latino race/ethnicity were also associated with a lower rate of voluntary events but no difference in risk of automated events. Black race was associated with an increased risk of automated events (IRR 1.11, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.20).
LIMITATIONS: This is a single centre study.
CONCLUSIONS: A commonly used method for monitoring patient safety problems, namely voluntary incident reporting, may underdetect safety events in vulnerable populations.