Table 2.

Hospitalization in the total sample of patients with asthma and by race/ethnicity and insurance instability category from two Massachusetts urban safety net hospital systems, 2005–2013

Instability (Four-Category)	n *	Total Intervals(N = 109,384) (%)*	Non-Hispanic White (n = 39,906) (%)*	Hispanic (n = 5,717) (%)*	Black/African American (n = 57,908) (%)*	Asian/Asian Pacific Islander (n = 5,853) (%)*
Hospitalization
Overall	109,384	7.2	5.9	8.5	8.3	2.8
Stable private insurance†	42,107	4.3	3.9	5.5	5.2	2.2
Stable public insurance‡	47,805	9.7	9.1	10.5	10.4	3.3
Any insurance switches§	13,110	8.3	7.5	8.7	8.8	2.8
Always uninsured	6,362	4.6	5.2	6.0	4.4	2.3

^*Six-month intervals.

^† Stable private insurance: typically employer-based or individual coverage without subsidies. Note: The nature of the analytic database did not allow identification of changes from one private to another private insurance, and these were not considered an insurance switch.

^‡ Stable public insurance: Medicaid, Medicare, or Commonwealth care, which was the subsidized insurance option during this time period.

^§ Any insurance switches: any switch in coverage between private, public, and no insurance such as uninsured to insured; switch between insurance categories; or insured to uninsured.