ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly summarizes the data linkage project that provided race information from other, secondary data sources. It provides a general racial disparity assessment using hospital discharge data (HDD). The Nebraska HDD had race and ethnicity fields, but about 93% of the values were missing for race. The chapter also provides a multivariate data analysis by adding race to the acute myocardial infarction analysis. It provides a discussion on prevalence, readmission, and mortality assessments. Normally, prevalence is appropriate for comorbidity surveillance, and incidence is suitable for hospitalization. Even though racial disparities in readmissions have been documented, there are two apparent gaps in the literature: too few studies documenting readmission disparities for a host of diagnoses and poverty is not often controlled when investigating readmission. Although many disease-oriented programs, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and injury, are interested in both incidence and prevalence, the state health disparity program was more interested in prevalence.
