Diabetes hospital deaths more likely for rural residents - Entrepreneur Generations

Type 2 diabetes is a significant cause for concern in rural America, especially in the South and Midwest, according to a recently published study by the Southwest Rural Health Research Center at Texas A&M University. The study, which was funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration, found that despite innovations and more widely available diabetes self-management programs, big differences between rural and urban mortality persist: rural residents are 17 percent more likely to die from a diabetes-related hospitalization than people who live in large metropolitan areas.

More than 30 million adults, about 10 percent of the population have diabetes; 97 percent of them have Type 2 diabetes. It's the seventh most common cause of death in the country, with nearly 80,000 related deaths in 2015. This study focused on diabetes deaths in hospitals from 2009 and 2014. There were an average of 1,456,200 diabetes-related hospitalizations per year during that period and 38,075 diabetes-related hospital deaths. Of those deaths, 20.3 percent occurred in rural/noncore areas. The odds of mortality for such rural patients was 3.4 percent higher than patients in large metro areas. Mortality rates were highest within the rural areas of the South and Midwest regions (21.0 and 15.1 deaths per 100,000 population, respectively) compared to the Northeast and West (11.1 and 10.8 deaths per 100,000 population, respectively). The study used data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Nationwide Inpatient Sample, which is the largest all-payer inpatient care database in the U.S.

The researchers speculated that the difference in mortality rates could be attributed to factors such as access to primary and endocrinology care, health literacy, trust in the health care system, access to good nutrition, and lifestyle choices, and recommend more research be done to explore the role of these factors in mortality discrepancies. 

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2HcmRGb Diabetes hospital deaths more likely for rural residents - Entrepreneur Generations

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