Race/ethnicity: Who Is Counting What?

We examined the racial/ethnic classifications of 1,084 veterans with stroke in Florida who received inpatient and outpatient services within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare system.

We compared the reliability of racial/ethnic classifications from the VA inpatient data with the VA outpatient data and the VA data with Medicare data. Misclassification of race/ethnicity in research data may produce spurious conclusions if overlooked or ignored.

Our results showed that the rate of unknown racial/ethnic classification in VA outpatient and inpatient data was high. We also found that black and white classifications in the VA data had stronger agreement with Medicare data and Medicare data may underrepresent Hispanic patients.

Minimizing the unknowns by substituting known values from other data when available would greatly enhance the overall and individual classification reliability.

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About the Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development

JRRD has been a leading research journal in the field of rehabilitation medicine and technology for more than 40 years. JRRD, a peer-reviewed, scientifically indexed journal, publishes original research papers, review articles, as well as clinical and technical commentary from U.S. and international researchers on all rehabilitation research disciplines. JRRD's mission is to responsibly evaluate and disseminate scientific research findings impacting the rehabilitative healthcare community.

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Race/ethnicity: Who Is Counting What?