Treatment quality and outcomes vary with hospital burden of uninsured and Medicaid patients with cancer in early non–small cell lung cancer

OBJECTIVES: Safety-net hospitals deliver a significant level of care to uninsured patients, Medicaid-enrolled patients, and other vulnerable patients. Little is known about the impact of safety-net hospital status on outcomes in non–small cell lung cancer. We aimed to compare treatment characteristics and outcomes between hospitals categorized according to their relative burden of uninsured or Medicaid-enrolled patients with non–small cell lung cancer. METHODS: We queried the National Cancer Database for patients with clinical stage I and II non–small cell lung cancer presenting from 2004 to 2018. We categorized hospitals on the basis of their relative burden of uninsured or Medicaid-enrolled patients with non–small cell lung cancer into low-burden (<8.2%), medium-burden (8.2%-12.0%), high-burden (12.1%-16.8%), and highest burden (>16.8%) quartiles. We investigated the impact of care at these hospitals on outcomes while controlling for sociodemographic, clinical, and facility characteristics. RESULTS: We identified 204,189 patients treated at 1286 facilities. There were 592 low-burden, 297 medium-burden, 219 high-burden, and 178 highest burden hospitals. Patients at highest burden hospitals were more likely to be younger, male, Black, and Hispanic (P < .01), and to reside in rural, low-income, and low-educated regions (P < .01). Patients at these facilities had a greater likelihood of not receiving surgery, undergoing an open procedure, undergoing a regional lymph node examination involving less than 10 lymph nodes, having a length of stay more than 4 days, and not receiving treatment (P < .05). CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate reduced treatment quality and higher mortality in patients undergoing surgery for early non–small cell lung cancer at hospitals with an increased burden of uninsured or Medicaid-enrolled patients with non–small cell lung cancer. There is a need to raise the standard of care to improve outcomes in vulnerable populations.