During a stroke, Black Americans arrive later to emergency departments — which are less likely to be notified of a patient’s condition ahead of time, a national study shows.
The research, led by University of Michigan and Brown University, found that it took approximately 28 minutes longer for a Black patient to be brought in for emergency care after displaying symptoms of a stroke.
The median time for any patient to make it to the hospital following stroke symptoms was 176 minutes.
Results are published in Circulation.
The research team reviewed data from more than 600,000 patients in the American Heart Association Get With The Guidelines Stroke Registry from mid-2015 through 2019.
Investigators found no significant difference between Black and white patients in the use of emergency services for transport during a stroke.
However, EMS workers were approximately 20% less likely to alert a receiving hospital ahead of a Black patient’s arrival compared to a white patient.
Hispanic and Asian stroke patients also had lower odds of a prehospital notification.
Patients in counties with a worse social deprivation score, a composite of demographic measures including poverty, educational attainment and access to transportation, also took longer to arrive at the hospital after displaying stroke symptoms.
Hospitals receiving patients from counties with worse social deprivation were also less likely to be notified ahead of time by EMS.
Researchers say that the longer intervals they observed between symptom onset and hospital arrival may be, in part, due to systemic issues in EMS care.
