Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Nursing homes with a high proportion of Hispanic patients are more likely to have patients with bedsores, according to a Brown University study of over 74,000 people in the Southwest United States.

But Dr. Michael P. Gerardo, a professor of community health at Brown, the chief author of the study, cautioned that the findings may not mean Hispanics are discriminated against in their nursing-home care. Instead, the results probably mean that Hispanics are more likely to end up in nursing homes that are underfunded or poorly run.

Earlier research, also done at Brown, showed that nursing homes with higher black populations also tended to have a higher incidence of patients with bedsores. Once again, the homes with the highest proportion of blacks were, on average, poorer.

"People tend to stay in the areas where they live," Gerardo said. "If the nursing homes in these counties are bad nursing homes, that's what they're stuck with. . . . The people within those nursing homes, regardless of whether they are white, black or Hispanic, are all going to have bad care."

The researchers came to their conclusion using two databases of all the freestanding nursing homes in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, where there is a high concentration of Hispanics.

 Tags  Brown University Hispanic

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