NIH # R01MD016910

Hospital Systems Serving Populations that Experience Health Disparities, also called “safety net hospitals”, deliver needed services to racial and ethnic minorities, and uninsured and Medicaid patients. Safety net hospitals may experience long-term effects of natural and human-made disasters that affect health outcomes for populations they serve. The most recent pandemic affected every US healthcare system and provided a unique opportunity to study effects of large-scale and long-term stressors on under-resourced systems. 

Using the disaster management cycle framework (mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery), this project proposes to conduct a mixed-methods study of the long-term effects of pandemics on US hospitals across four critical domains (quality, workforce, finances, innovation), focusing on safety net hospitals and populations they serve. 

This project will be the first major investigation of national disaster effects on safety net hospitals. This study will be significant in identifying safety net hospitals most and least affected by the most recent pandemic and will deepen understanding of factors contributing to successes and challenges. The study will identify actionable best practices and challenges to safety net hospital operations before, during, and after pandemics.