Welcome to the online home of CHERP’s collaborations. It is designed to be a resource for our stakeholders and our collaborative partners. CHERP's VA Web site is under construction and will soon be located at www.cherp.research.va.gov.
AHRQ 2007 Disparities Report Available Online, Three themes emerge from the 2007 report. First, significant disparities in health care quality and access persist. Second, although some headway has occurred, the biggest gaps in quality and access remain large. Finally, uninsurance is a major obstacle to reducing health care disparities. more...
CHERP Has A Great Showing at 2008 SGIM Conference, CHERP Investigators presented 24 abstracts at the Society for General Internal Medicine Conference (SGIM) Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA, including two plenary presentations, nine oral presentations and a workshop. In addition, Virginia Chang, MD, PhD received the 2008 SGIM Outstanding Junior Investigator award during a ceremony on Saturday, April 12. more...
Is Thirty-Day Hospital Mortality Really Lower for Black Veterans Compared with White Veterans?, Black patients older than 65 admitted to Veterans hospitals for certain conditions have better 30-day mortality rates than their white counterparts. Building on research that demonstrated a lower risk-adjusted mortality for black compared to white veterans, Volpp and colleagues examined VA 30-day mortality data for 406,550 patients hospitalized from 1996 to 2002 with six common conditions (congestive heart failure, gastrointestinal bleeding, pneumonia, acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), hip fracture and stroke) to evaluate potential sources of these mortality differences. Although the overall the mortality rate for blacks was better, they found that most of the benefit for black veterans was attributable to veterans over the age of 65; for those under age 65 the results were mixed. Volpp and colleagues found that differences in mortality between white and black veterans were consistent across the 8 years studied. These differences persisted after statistical adjustment for VA hospital site of treatment and differences in co morbid conditions. Potential variation in threshold for hospitalization for pneumonia, congestive heart failure and GI bleed and potential undercounting of within VA mortality data were accounted for in the study design. more...
