• Jennifer S Haas, Mitzi L Dean, YunYi Hung, and Deborah J Rennie.
• Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA. jhaas@partners.org
• Am. J. Med. 2003 Jun 1; 114 (8): 660664660-4.

PurposeTo determine ethnic disparities in mortality for patients with community-acquired pneumonia, and the potential effects of hospital characteristics on disparities, we compared the risk-adjusted mortality of white, African American, Hispanic, and Asian American patients hospitalized for community-acquired pneumonia.MethodsWe studied patients discharged with community-acquired pneumonia in 1996 from an acute care hospital in California (n = 54,874). Logistic regression models were used to examine the association between ethnicity and hospital characteristics and 30-day mortality after adjusting for clinical characteristics.ResultsThe overall 30-day mortality was 12.2%. After adjustment for demographic, clinical, and hospital characteristics, Hispanic (odds ratio [OR] = 0.81; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.73 to 0.90) and Asian American patients (OR = 0.88; 95% CI: 0.77 to 1.00) had lower mortality than did white patients, whereas African Americans had a similar mortality to whites (OR = 0.93; 95% CI: 0.83 to 1.06). There were no overall differences in mortality by hospital characteristics (i.e., teaching status, rural location, and public or district hospital).ConclusionHispanics and Asian Americans have a lower risk of death from community-acquired pneumonia than whites in California. No overall differences in mortality were observed by hospital characteristics.

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