New Study From Inovalon and Genentech Finds Racial Disparities In Emergency Department Visits For Liver Cancer Care

Research Reveals How Social Drivers of Health Influence Higher Rates of Emergency Department Utilization for Black and Hispanic Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients

BOWIE, Md., June 25, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Inovalon, a leading provider of cloud-based software solutions empowering data-driven healthcare, today released a study with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, and the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital evaluating the association of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic position (SEP) on emergency department (ED) visits for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The study examined structural health inequities that affect access to and quality of care and found ED utilization for liver cancer care is higher in Black and Hispanic patients compared with white patients, regardless of their socioeconomic status. 

HCC is the fastest-rising cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and the most common type of primary liver cancer, comprising up to 85% of cases. Social drivers of health (SDOH) and racial and ethnic disparities have led to minority and vulnerable populations accessing less early diagnosis, surveillance, and treatment, resulting in worse outcomes. “Race/Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Position in Emergency Department Utilization in Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma” was recently published in Future Oncology and is one of the only studies to examine the association between race or ethnicity and income and the impact on outcomes in HCC patients.

The study examined 22,247 newly diagnosed patients with primary HCC between 2015 and 2018. The research adjusted for SDOH, demographic, and clinical characteristics to analyze the effect of race/ethnicity and SEP on ED utilization. Key findings and observations include:

• Black and Hispanic patients had the highest number of ED visits: Compared with white patients, ED visits were 27% higher for Black and 17% higher for Hispanic patients. Asian patients had the lowest ED utilization having 36% fewer visits than white patients.
• At high-income levels, Black and Hispanic patients had 43% and 18% higher ED utilization than white patients. At middle-income levels, Black and Hispanic patients had 36% and 30% higher ED utilization than white patients. ED visits did not differ significantly at low-income levels.

The research was made possible by a retrospective claims-based cohort study from Inovalon’s MORE² Registry^®, the nation’s largest healthcare primary source de-identified dataset. The MORE² Registry covers 100% of public Medicare, 89% of managed Medicaid, 31% of commercial insured lives, and 29% of Medicare Advantage. Additionally, the data are linked through a secure process to patients’ SDOH data using their 9-digit ZIP Code representing 32 million discrete data points on near neighborhood characteristics. 

“While socioeconomic factors are associated with disparities in likelihood of emergency department visits, our research also suggests there are broader and more complex structural inequities such as the significantly larger disparities for Black patients at higher income levels,” said Christie Teigland, PhD, VP of Research Science and Advanced Analytics at Inovalon. “Emergency department visits expose patients to infection risk, less specialized care, and financial burden. These findings signal a need to deploy data-driven interventions to improve healthcare access and outcomes to achieve health equity for all individuals.”

About Inovalon

Inovalon is a leading provider of cloud-based software solutions empowering data-driven healthcare. The Inovalon ONE® Platform brings together national-scale connectivity, real-time primary source data access, and advanced analytics into a sophisticated cloud-based platform empowering improved outcomes and economics across the healthcare ecosystem. The company’s analytics and capabilities are used by nearly 20,000 customers supporting over 53,000 sites of care, and are informed by the primary source data of more than 83 billion medical events across 1.1 million physicians, 669,000 clinical settings, and 389 million unique lives. For more information, visit www.inovalon.com.

Contact:
Tom Paolella
Sr. Director, Press and Analyst Relations, Inovalon
Thomas.Paolella@inovalon.com