Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Emergency Medical Services Transport to EDs

The American College of Emergency Physicians states that emergency medical services (EMS) agencies should transport patients to the nearest emergency department (ED). Sometimes, however, factors (e.g., need for specialized care, patient preference, prior care at a destination hospital) may prompt transport of patients to alternative EDs. To examine whether racial disparities exist in EMS transport to EDs, these authors analyzed nationwide ED destination patterns in roughly 460,000 EMS transports of Medicare patients from 2006 to 2012. Using the ED that white patients were most frequently transported to as the reference ED, the authors compared ED destinations among patients of different racial and ethnic groups living in the same zip code.

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