Salon.com
By
March
20, 2002 | Washington -- Minorities in the United States
receive lower-quality health care than whites -- both for serious conditions
and routine services -- the Institute of Medicine reported Wednesday.
"Disparities
in the health care delivered to racial and ethnic minorities are real and are
associated with worse outcomes in many cases, which is
unacceptable," said Dr. Alan Nelson, chairman of the committee that
prepared the report.
"The
real challenge lies not in debating whether disparities exist, because the
evidence is overwhelming, but in implementing strategies to reduce and
eliminate them," said Nelson, a retired physician and current consultant
to the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine in
The
report, "Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in
Health Care," was prepared by the
This
isn't the first study to conclude that minority health care in the
In
January the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that, while
Americans made advances in the 1990s against a broad range of diseases, racial
and ethnic disparities remain.
The
new report says minorities are less likely than whites to receive appropriate
heart medicine, undergo bypass surgery or receive kidney dialysis or
transplants. It found differences in receiving cancer
treatment and said minorities are less likely to receive the newest treatment
for AIDS.
Among
the examples:
--A
study of nearly 11,000 patients with lung cancer found that 76 percent of
whites and 64 percent of blacks had surgery. After five years the survival rate
was 26 percent for blacks and 34 percent for whites.
--A
report on more than 13,000 heart patients found that for every 100 white
patients who had a procedure to clear the heart artery, only 74 blacks did.
--Among
15,578 people who sought care in an urban emergency room, blacks were 1.5 times
more likely to be denied authorization by their managed-care providers.
The
report said the differences exist even when insurance, income, age and the
severity of the disease are the same for both groups.
The
committee recommended changing health insurance programs to reduce disparities
among economic groups and setting up education programs to increase health care
providers' awareness of the problem.
Other
recommendations included recruiting more minorities into health care, expanding
patient education programs and improving enforcement of laws against
discrimination.
The
National Academy of Sciences is an independent organization chartered by
Congress to provide advice to the government on scientific topics.
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