Detroit is the most segregated hospital market in the U.S., according to a ranking from the Lown Institute, a nonpartisan healthcare think tank.
The segregation metric examines the proportion of hospitals whose patients closely matched community demographics compared to hospitals whose patients did not. The most segregated cities were those in which the greatest proportion of hospitals did not match the demographics of their communities. For the ranking, Lown used Medicare claims data from 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more about the methodology here.
Here are the 10 cities with the most segregated hospital care, as ranked by the Lown Institute:
1. Detroit
2. St. Louis
3. Kansas City, Mo.
4. Atlanta
5. Philadelphia
6. Washington, D.C.
7. East Long Island, N.Y.
8. Houston
9. Baltimore
10. Manhattan, N.Y.
*Cities are defined by their hospital referral regions identified via the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care project. The regions are based on where Medicare patients are admitted for tertiary care.