I like it when racial problems turn out to be something that can be addressed
The thing is to actually address it.
Quote of note:
The researchers found that 22 percent of the doctors nationally accounted for 80 percent of the visits by black patients and only 22 percent of visits by white patients. These doctors, most of whom were white, provided more free care, treated more patients insured by the government's Medicaid insurance program for those with low incomes, and were more likely to practice in low-income neighborhoods, the study found. Seventy-seven percent of them had board certification in their primary care specialty, compared with 86 percent of doctors who mainly treated white patients.
Black patients seemed to seek out black doctors, seeing them 22 percent of the time, while whites saw black doctors less than 1 percent of the time. Nationwide, 5 percent of physicians are black.
Nearly 28 percent of physicians primarily treating blacks said they could not provide access to high-quality care for all their patients, compared with only 19 percent of doctors primarily treating whites.
Disparities found in health care for blacks
By Alice Dembner, Globe Staff | August 5, 2004
Many black people in the United States get their primary health care in a separate and apparently inferior system, according to a study published today -- a situation similar to the segregated neighborhood schools prevalent in some parts of the country.
The dual system for blacks and whites is not the result of doctors' bias but rather geographic segregation, the authors say, and may help explain the higher rates of disease and death that persist among blacks.
''When black patients go to the doctor, they're more likely to be treated by a doctor who can't harness the full capabilities of the health care system," said Dr. Peter B. Bach, an epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York who was the lead author of the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Examining patterns of office visits by black and white patients on Medicare, the government health insurance program for the elderly, the study found that most blacks were treated by a subset of doctors who had less training than doctors who treated whites, and who told interviewers that they were frequently unable to provide high-quality care.
These doctors, of all races, were less likely than doctors who mostly treated white patients to have passed exams showing mastery of a primary care specialty. They were more likely to report that they could not always help their patients get treatment from specialists, diagnostic imaging such as MRIs, or admission to the hospital when it wasn't an emergency. These differences remained even after the researchers took into account patients' insurance status.
The doctors' training and problems with referrals were similar to those of other doctors in their neighborhood, the researchers found, suggesting the problem was the result of geographic patterns rather than racial discrimination by doctors.
''It's not that the blacks couldn't go to other doctors," Bach said. ''These doctors practice in the neighborhoods where blacks live."
