High Rates of COVID-19 Among Minorities Associated With Exposures at Work, Home

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Access more information on this topic in the associated statistical brief.

Today's Headlines:

• High Rates of COVID-19 Among Minorities Associated With Exposures at Work, Home.
• Study Measures Mental Health Services’ Impact on Lowering Suicide Attempts.
• Highlights From AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network.
• For Primary Care Providers, How They Communicate Matters.
• AHRQ in the Professional Literature.

High Rates of COVID-19 Among Minorities Associated With Exposures at Work, Home

Disproportionate rates of COVID-19 illness and death among racial and ethnic minorities likely stem from a higher probability of exposure to the virus at work and at home, according to a new study by AHRQ researchers.  The analysis, published today in Health Affairs and based on data from the agency’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, identified large racial-ethnic differences in job characteristics, with blacks being substantially more likely than whites to work in the health sector, public safety and public utilities. Hispanics were much more likely than whites to work in food-related jobs, and both blacks and Hispanics were less likely than whites to be able to work at home, researchers concluded. The authors examined the connection between workers in high-exposure jobs and household members with high risk of severe illness if infected, offering new insights into why COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted minorities. Previous explanations have attributed the disparities to black and Hispanic adults being more likely than whites to suffer from underlying conditions. Access the study abstract as well as additional AHRQ COVID-19 resources.

Study Measures Mental Health Services’ Impact on Lowering Suicide Attempts

Greater access to mental health services reduces the likelihood of individuals attempting suicide by an average of nearly 18 percentage points, according to an AHRQ-funded study published in The Journal of Behavioral Health Services and Research. Researchers compared data on the number of suicide attempts and the number of mental health service providers for every county in the nation. They concluded that policies aimed at expanding mental health services in areas with limited access could further reduce suicide risk. Access the abstract.

Highlights From AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network

AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network (PSNet) highlights journal articles, books and tools related to patient safety. Articles featured this week include:

• COVID-19: to be or not to be; that is the diagnostic question.
• Predictors of serious opioid-related adverse drug events in hospitalized patients.
• Impact of providing patients access to electronic health records on quality and safety of care: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Review additional new publications in PSNet’s current issue or access recent cases and commentaries in AHRQ’s WebM&M (Morbidity and Mortality Rounds on the Web).

For Primary Care Providers, How They Communicate Matters

How primary care team members speak with each other may be as important as what they say to each other, with an emphasis on team communication behavior leading to better health management for some patients, a new AHRQ-funded study has determined. The study, published in Medical Care, measured how primary care providers communicated with their teams in three ways: participation, time spent listening and uninterrupted speaking length. Researchers found that primary care physicians participated in 75 percent of care team conversations, spent 56 percent of conversation time listening and spoke without interruption for an average of 2.42 seconds. The researchers found that all three aspects were associated with significantly higher odds that their patients had controlled hypertension and diabetes and improvements in disease control over time, and concluded that primary care team communication behaviors may be as important as the content of their communication. Access the abstract. 

AHRQ in the Professional Literature

Legal aspects of information sharing and communication by poison centers in the United States. McDonald A, Francis L, Crouch BI, et al. Clin Toxicol 2020 Jul;58(7):669-75. Epub 2020 Jan 14. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Simulation-based mastery learning compared to standard education for discussing diagnostic uncertainty with patients in the emergency department: a randomized controlled trial. McCarthy DM, Powell RE, Cameron KA, et al. BMC Med Educ 2020 Feb 19;20(1):49. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Emergency department telemedicine consults are associated with faster time-to-electrocardiogram and time-to-fibrinolysis for myocardial infarction patients. Miller AC, Ward MM, Ullrich F, et al. Telemed J E Health 2020 Feb 28. [Epub ahead of print.] Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Delayed antibiotic prescriptions in ambulatory care: reconsidering a problematic practice. Rowe TA, Linder JA. JAMA 2020 Apr 16. [Epub ahead of print.] Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Multi-institution evaluation of adherence to comprehensive postoperative VTE chemoprophylaxis. Yang AD, Hewitt DB, Blay E, Jr., et al. Ann Surg 2020 Jun;271(6):1072-9. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Impact of a low-intensity resource referral intervention on patients' knowledge, beliefs, and use of community resources: results from the CommunityRx trial. Tung EL, Abramsohn EM, Boyd K, et al. J Gen Intern Med 2020 Mar;35(3):815-23. Epub 2019 Nov 20. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Provider-level and hospital-level factors and process measures of quality care delivered in pediatric emergency departments. Marcin JP, Romano PS, Dayal P, et al. Acad Pediatr 2020 May-Jun;20(4):524-31. Epub 2019 Nov 21. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Improvements in sepsis-associated mortality in hospitalized patients with cancer versus those without cancer. A 12-year analysis using clinical data. Cooper AJ, Keller SP, Chan C, et al. Ann Am Thorac Soc 2020 Apr;17(4):466-73. Epub 2019 Dec 5. Access the abstract on PubMed®.