OBJECTIVES: Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of death from cancer in men of all ages and the most common cause of death from cancer in men over 75 years old.  The mortality rates in African-American men are more than twice that of Caucasian men, even after attempts to adjust for access-to-care factors.  Even with increases in screening, African American men still experience high incidence and mortality rates than all races.  Therefore, the specific aim was to examine differences affecting Caucasian and African American men with prostate cancer in a hospitalized setting. METHODS: The study design was an exploratory, nonrandomized, secondary data analysis of the 2006 HCUP - NIS.  Ten percent of the subsample was used.  Only Caucasian and African American men with a primary diagnosis of prostate cancer (ICD-9 Code = 185) were included.  SPSS 15.0 was used to analyze the data. RESULTS: The study population consisted of 9,736 Caucasian Americans (87.5%) and 1,387 African Americans (12.5%).  Results of the t-test (p = .000) indicated that Caucasian Americans experienced a significantly lower average length of stay than African Americans (3.04 vs 5.04 days, respectively).  Based on the regression analysis, the model was significant (F = 520.746, p = .000; R2 = 27.6%).  Six of the eight variables were significant; race, income, admission source, principal procedure, length of stay, and died during hospitalization, each with a p = .000 value.  The mean for total charges was $24,293, with a standard deviation of $23,339. CONCLUSIONS: Differences were found among the two groups.  These findings may assist health care entities in determining additional factors which could aid in the fight against prostate cancer.  In addition, private payers (including HMOs and Medicare) would especially be interested since each entity represented the bulk of expected primary payers for the hospitalized patients.