Study: Blacks get poorer nursing home care

African-Americans in the U.S. often get lower-quality nursing home care than whites, according to a new study published in the journal Health Affairs. The wide-ranging study, which was funded by the Commonwealth Fund, looked at data from 2000 on 7,196 nursing homes which took care of more than 800,000 residents across 147 metropolitan areas across the U.S.

Researchers conducting the study found that blacks were almost three times as likely as whites to live in homes with a large percentage of Medicaid beneficiaries, which often lack the resources to provide the best care. In addition, blacks were nearly 1.5 times as likely to live in nursing homes cited for dangerous violations of Medicare and Medicaid rules. Researchers also found that blacks were most likely receive worse care in racially-segregated nursing homes, which were particularly common in, for example, Cleveland, Gary, IN, Milwaukee, Detroit and Indianapolis.

To learn more about this research:
- read this Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report item

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