More Poor Treated at ‘Worst’ Hospitals, Study Finds

The hospitals rated the country’s worst in a new Harvard study treat twice the number of elderly black and poor patients as the top-ranked medical centers and are more likely to lose patients to heart attacks or pneumonia, writes the Associated Press.

The study, conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and financed by the Commonwealth Fund, found that older African-Americans made up 15 percent of patients at the 178 hospitals rated lowest for quality of care and high costs, compared with 7 percent in the 122 best facilities. The disparity was similar for Medicaid patients.

The low-rated hospitals were mostly in the South, while the top-tier institutions, those offering better care at lower costs, were generally nonprofit centers in the Northeast.

Ashish Jha, lead author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs, said the nation’s new health law could widen the care gap for minorities and the needy because it shrinks Medicaid payments to hospitals with poor records of care.