Publications by authors named "Shangbin Tang"
Background: Previous analyses measuring geographic access to community pharmacies (pharmacy access) have relied solely on driving distance or time, without considering other modes of transportation such as walking and public transportation. This omission represents an important limitation, particularly in metropolitan areas where other transportation modes are regularly used, which potentially can lead to the underestimation of inequities in pharmacy access.
Objectives: To investigate whether measuring pharmacy access based on driving underestimates inequities in access, given the fact that not everyone has access to a vehicle.
Since 2021, hospitals have been required to report the prices of common, shoppable services, including drugs, as per the Hospital Price Transparency Rule. In this paper, we used Hospital Price Transparency data aggregated by Turquoise Health to investigate the usability of price transparency data to evaluate variation in reimbursement for provider-administered drugs. We extracted records for 30 procedure codes corresponding to provider-administered drugs reported by at least 1,000 National Provider Identifiers (NPIs) and evaluated variability in rates reported for each procedure code.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVulnerability Index Approach to Identify Pharmacy Deserts and Keystone Pharmacies.
JAMA Netw Open
March 2025
Importance: Community pharmacies are crucial for public health, providing essential services such as medication dispensing, vaccinations, and point-of-care testing. Addressing disparities in pharmacy access, particularly in underserved rural and low-income areas, is critical for health equity.
Objective: To identify areas in the US at risk of becoming pharmacy deserts through the development of a novel pharmacy vulnerability index.
COVID-19 Diagnosis, Oral Anticoagulation, and Stroke Risk in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation.
Am J Cardiovasc Drugs
September 2024
Article Synopsis
- - The study examined the relationship between COVID-19 infection, oral anticoagulation (OAC) use, and stroke risk in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) using a large database of patient records.
- - Results showed that while OAC use reduced the overall risk of stroke, COVID-19 infection significantly increased stroke risk, especially for patients hospitalized with the virus.
- - Importantly, the increased stroke risk from COVID-19 was similar for patients whether or not they were on OAC, indicating that OAC use did not alter the risk associated with COVID-19.
Racial and ethnic inequities in spatial access to pharmacies: A geographic information system analysis.
J Am Pharm Assoc (2003)
September 2024
Article Synopsis
- * Using a large sample, researchers found that 80.6% of individuals had optimal access to pharmacies, but significant disparities existed, especially for Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous individuals in rural areas.
- * The results indicated that these inequities also varied by region, with certain groups having lower odds of optimal pharmacy access depending on whether they lived in suburban or rural areas.
Article Synopsis
- The study aimed to assess how the COVID-19 pandemic affected health care for patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), particularly focusing on clinical events like hospitalizations and strokes.
- Researchers followed 561,758 AF patients from before 2019 until September 2021, analyzing data to see changes in health outcomes after the pandemic started on March 11, 2020.
- Findings revealed a significant drop in hospitalization rates and new diagnoses of ischemic stroke and major bleeding during the pandemic, with rates gradually returning to pre-pandemic levels by late 2020.
COVID-19 pandemic and initiation of treatment for atrial fibrillation: a nationwide analysis of claims data.
BMC Cardiovasc Disord
December 2023
Article Synopsis
- The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected healthcare delivery, prompting a study to assess treatment initiation in patients newly diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AF) during this period.
- A retrospective analysis of over 573,000 AF patients showed no major change in starting oral anticoagulation (OAC) medications within 30 days of diagnosis due to the pandemic.
- However, there was a notable decline in the initiation of electrical cardioversion procedures, with rates dropping by about 35% in April 2020 compared to the previous year.
Pharmacy accessibility is critical for equity in medication access and is jeopardized by pharmacy closures, which disproportionately affect independent pharmacies. We conducted a geographic information systems analysis to quantify how many individuals across the US do not have optimal pharmacy access or solely rely on independent pharmacies for access. We generated service areas of pharmacies using OpenStreetMap data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- * Findings show that people living further away from these facilities experienced higher mortality rates from COVID-19.
- * The effect of distance on mortality was especially significant in areas with higher numbers of Black and Hispanic residents, indicating a racial and ethnic disparity in health outcomes.
Infrastructure system in the U.S. have been shown to be linked to social and health inequities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAccess to community pharmacies: A nationwide geographic information systems cross-sectional analysis.
J Am Pharm Assoc (2003)
November 2022
Article Synopsis
- Pharmacy accessibility is crucial for community pharmacists to provide patient-centered medication management services alongside traditional roles in the U.S.
- A study analyzed pharmacy locations and found that almost half of the U.S. population lives within 1 mile of a pharmacy, but some rural counties have limited access, with 8.3% of counties having over 50% of residents more than 10 miles away.
- The findings highlight a significant presence of chain pharmacies in urban areas and an increased reliance on independent pharmacies in rural regions, emphasizing the need for diverse pharmacy access to support community health.
Background: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly called for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine equity. The objective our study was to measure equity in the early distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to healthcare facilities across the US. Specifically, we tested whether the likelihood of a healthcare facility administering COVID-19 vaccines in May 2021 differed by county-level racial composition and degree of urbanicity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Inequities in access to health care contribute to persisting disparities in health care outcomes. We constructed a geographic information systems analysis to test the association between income and access to the existing health care infrastructure in a nationally representative sample of US residents. Using income and household size data, we calculated the odds ratio of having a distance > 10 miles in nonmetropolitan counties or > 1 mile in metropolitan counties to the closest facility for low-income residents (i.
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