Racial Differences in Sepsis Mortality at U.S. Academic Medical Center-Affiliated Hospitals

To determine the racial disparities in severe sepsis hospitalizations and outcomes in U.S. academic medical center-affiliated hospitals.

Retrospective analysis of sepsis hospitalizations.

U.S. academic medical center-affiliated hospitals participating in Vizient Consortium from 2012 to 2014.

Sepsis hospitalizations using International Classification of Diseases, Ninth revision, discharge diagnoses codes defined by the Angus method.

None.

We compared rates of sepsis hospitalization, ICU admission, organ dysfunction, and hospital mortality between blacks and whites. We repeated the analyses stratified by community-acquired, healthcare-associated, and hospital-acquired sepsis subtypes. Of 10,244,780 hospitalizations in our cohort, 1,114,386 (10.9%) had sepsis. Sepsis subtypes included community-acquired sepsis (61.8%), healthcare-associated sepsis (23.8%), and hospital-acquired sepsis (14.4%). Although the proportion of discharges with sepsis was lower for blacks than whites (106.72 vs 109.43 per 1,000 hospitalizations; p < 0.001), the proportion of black sepsis hospitalizations was higher for individuals greater than 30 years old. Blacks exhibited lower adjusted sepsis hospital mortality than whites (odds ratio, 0.85; 95% CI, 0.84-0.86). The adjusted odds of hospital mortality following community-acquired, healthcare-associated, and hospital-acquired sepsis were lower for blacks than whites.

In this current series of hospital discharges at U.S. academic medical center-affiliated hospitals, blacks exhibited lower adjusted rates of sepsis hospitalizations and mortality than whites.