Racism/Sexism in Health Care

Someone sent me a full copy of this article from WebMD. The research found that only a minority of minority members actually preferred a physician of the same race or ethnicity as their own. The majority had no preference. For African-Americans who had a preference, the reason was based on a belief that there is inherent racism in the American health care system.

The authors agreed that there is a pattern of undercare for minorities, that is, some comparatively small percentage will receive less than optimal care. However, the overwhelming majority of minority members do, in fact, receive excellent care in the current system.

The authors apparently think that there should be less emphasis on trying to recruit and train more minority doctors and instead work with the patients who are uncomfortable with the system to make them more comfortable--or something like that. When I got to this quote, my brain shut down, and I decided that they needed to rework their analysis a tad.

"Say a white person comes in and says, 'I only want to see a white doctor.' How comfortable are we with this?" van Ryn says. "And another problem is right now, blacks are a minority of doctors. And for black patients always seeing one, even if we had an equivalent ratio of black doctors to the black population, it is not going to work out. And what about Native Americans, and those who want women doctors? So while I think it is extremely important to have the health care work force represent the population being served, I am not sure [matching patients to doctors by race] is viable."

You can see from the emphasis that I added what set me off. I just remembered an exchange that I had with the male HMO doc that I used to see:

Me: I'm having chest pains.
Him: Let's do the hysterectomy first and then we'll deal with that.

"That" was the referred pain from a seriously bad gall bladder, which had to be removed less than eight weeks after the hysterectomy.

Compare that to the exchange with the female PPO doc that I see now:

Me: I'm having chest pains.
Her: Let's do an EKG.

And then she followed it up with a referral to a cardiologist.

Somehow, I don't think it's the HMO vs. PPO issue that makes the difference. Indeed, we now pay more for a PPO so that I can see a woman doctor.