Racial & ethnic disparities in geographic access to critical care in the United States: A geographic information systems analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

It is important to identify gaps in access and reduce health outcome disparities, understanding access to intensive care unit (ICU) beds, especially by race and ethnicity, is crucial. Our objective was to evaluate the race and ethnicity-specific 60-minute drive time accessibility of ICU beds in the United States (US).

Design

We conducted a cross-sectional study using road network analysis to determine the number of ICU beds within a 60-minute drive time, and calculated adult intensive care bed ratios per 100,000 adults. We evaluated the US population at the Census block group level and stratified our analysis by race and ethnicity and by urbanicity. We classified block groups into four access levels: no access (0 adult intensive care beds/100,000 adults), below ave

SUBMITTER: Burdick KJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10619775 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature