Abstract WP77: Racial Disparities Of Post-stroke Hospital Discharge

Objective: Early post-acute care for stroke survivors affect their morbidity, mortality, and long term disability and quality of lives. This study aimed to understand the utilization of post-acute services among different racial/ethnicity population. Methods: We examined the discharge destinations amongst patients admitted directly from the emergency department for ischemic stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA) in 2017-2018 using the National Inpatient Sample, a 20% stratified sample of all discharges from U.S. community hospitals. Results: This study included 1,000,645 live ischemic stroke/TIA discharges with good racial/ethnicity representations (Table). Compared to their White counterpart, Hispanic patients were more likely to be discharged to home without home health care (49.1% vs 42.1%, OR 1.33, 95% CI 1.27-1.38), as well as Native Americans (47.5%, OR 1.24, 95% CI 1.06-1.46). Conversely, Hispanics are less likely to be discharged to inpatient rehabilitation or skilled nursing facilities than White (29.1% vs 36.5%, OR 0.71, 95% CI 0.68-0.74), as well as Native Americans (32.7%, OR 0.85, 95% CI 0.72-0.99). Facility discharge rates were comparable among Black and White (OR 0.99, 95% CI 0.97-1.03). Conclusion: Hispanics and Native Americans are more likely to be discharged to home without home health care and less likely to be discharged to facilities after stroke. Further study are need to understand the attributes of the discharge disparities after stroke hospitalization.