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Related sites Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Hygiene
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Minorities receive inferior care, study finds
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10-18-99 New York. Members of racial and ethnic minority groups receive inferior primary medical care, according to a new study. Minorities wait twice as long as whites to be seen by their primary care physician, have more trouble getting appointments, and are less likely to feel satisfied with the care they receive, according to the study, which appears in this month's issue of Medical Care. "Even after taking into account sociodemographic differences between whites and minorities, we still find a significant difference in the quality of primary care across racial and ethnic groups," said the study's author, Leiyu Shi, PhD, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore. Shi analyzed data from the 1997-1998 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, which surveyed a representative sample of adults throughout the United States for information about race, ethnicity, and their experiences with primary care. He found that minorities were less likely than whites to have health insurance and more likely to identify a hospital as their source of primary care rather than an individual physician. But even when comparing uninsured whites with uninsured minorities living in the same community, Shi found that minorities received inferior care based on their own survey responses. "I don't think it's intentional discrimination by caregivers," Shi said. "I think it's cultural and ethnic insensitivity." Shi's study points out a longstanding flaw in the healthcare system, according to Sidney Wolf, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group. "The system was set up to take care of the first people to be insured, who were affluent whites," Wolf said. "Where it starts dealing with people who aren't in that cohort, there needs to be readjustment, and that hasn't taken place. It's de facto discrimination."
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