PERT era, race‐based healthcare disparities in a large urban safety net hospital

Pulmonary embolism (PE) is the third leading cause of cardiovascular death in the United States. Black Americans have higher incidence, greater clot severity, and worse outcomes than White Americans. This disparity is not fully understood, especially in the context of the advent of PE response teams (PERT), which aim to standardize PE‐related care. This retrospective single‐center cohort study compared 294 Black and 131 White patients from our institution's PERT database. Primary objectives included severity and in‐hospital management. Secondary outcomes included length of stay, 30‐day readmission, 30‐day mortality, and outpatient follow‐up. Clot (p = 0.42), acute treatment (p = 0.28), 30‐day mortality (p = 0.77), 30‐day readmission (p = 0.50), and outpatient follow‐up (p = 0.98) were similar between races. Black patients had a lower mean household income ($35,383, SD 20,596) than White patients ($63,396, SD 32,987) (p