Findings from Dartmouth College Geisel School of Medicine Has Provided New Information about Managed Care (The association between local hospital segregation and hospital quality for medicare enrollees): Managed Care

2025 DEC 11 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Researchers detail new data in Managed Care. According to news reporting originating in Hanover, New Hampshire, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “There is considerable racial segregation in U.S. hospitals that residence alone cannot explain. Little is known about how this patient sorting affects racial inequalities.”

Funders for this research include National Institute on Aging, National Cancer Institute.

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from the Dartmouth College Geisel School of Medicine, “We use 2019 Medicare claims data linked to CMS Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings to measure how the sorting of Black patients to different hospitals within the same healthcare markets affects racial gaps in hospital quality. Defining a hospital’s market based on driving time, we use the local hospital segregation (LHS) index to measure racial sorting within a market; this measures the hospital’s disproportionate share of Black patients relative to the hospital’s market. In the sample of 2,163 hospitals, we find a 10 percent point increase in the LHS was associated with a 79% increase in the risk of being admitted to a lower-quality hospital. Thus, hospitals receiving a disproportionate share of Black patients due to market segregation are of systematically lower quality.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “A better understanding of hospital choice drivers could help reduce racial inequalities in health outcomes.”

For more information on this research see: The association between local hospital segregation and hospital quality for medicare enrollees. PLOS One, 2025;20(12). PLOS One can be contacted at: Public Library Science, 1160 Battery Street, Ste 100, San Francisco, CA 94111, USA. (Public Library of Science - www.plos.org; PLOS One - www.plosone.org)

Our news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Deanna Chyn, Dartmouth College Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Additional authors for this research include Ellesse-Roselee L. Akre, Heather A. Carlos, Amber E. Barnato and Jonathan Skinner.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0337559. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

The publisher of the journal PLOS One can be contacted at: Public Library Science, 1160 Battery Street, Ste 100, San Francisco, CA 94111, USA.

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