By: Jean Johnson for Heart1Class, race and gender disparities within the healthcare system are nothing new. The problem is, however, that even though they have been identified and documented, they haven’t gone away.
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Tips on getting access to improved healthcare
1. Research the options for treatments along with benefits and risks.
2. Find out about physician experience in terms of numbers of procedures done. Does the hospital track success rates of various procedures?
3. Ask for a second opinion. Insurance policies generally cover these.
4. Expect the health care providers to take time to answer all concerns.
Quote from Maya Angelou:
“One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”
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“My husband Richard died from his heart attack six years ago now,” said Florence Jackson, a member of Portland, Oregon’s black community. “To this day, I believe that he’d still be alive if we were white. They just didn’t seem to listen to him. Always in big important hurry the doctors were, and you felt so stupid around them. And the nurses, one of them especially I remember with her blonde curls. She never did pay Richard much mind she was so busy talking about how soon her shift would end and yawning and everything. She said all the right things of course, but you got the message that us black people didn’t add up to much.”By way of confirmation, a newly released study from the Maya Angelou Research Center on Minority Health at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center concludes that the black population in America receives less aggressive treatment for heart attack than whites. Titled, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Cardiac Catheterization for Acute Myocardial Infarction in the United States, 1995-2001,” appeared in the Journal of the National Medical Association (JNMA) in March 2005.
Assistant professor of medicine at Wake Forest Baptist, Alan G. Bertoni, M.D., M.P.H. and his colleagues found that while 60 percent of every 100 white patients received cardiac catheterization for treatment of heart attack, only 50 percent of every 100 black patients benefited from the procedure.
“Heart disease is a leading cause of illness and death in our country that disproportionately affects African-Americans,” said Bertoni, who added that proactive patients fare better. “If African-Americans are more informed, they can have improved dialogue with the medical team deciding how to care for them.” Data from 600,000 patients across the country were analyzed and Bertoni found racial disparities consistent throughout the nation.
Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have found similar trends. According to acting director of the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the CDD, George Mensah, M.D., “In general, the population subgroups most significantly and adversely affected were African Americans, Hispanics/Mexicans, people with low socioeconomic status and residents of the southeastern United States and the Appalachians.
“To paraphrase what Dr. Martin Luther King said about justice, ‘poor quality health care anywhere is a threat to quality care for all Americans everywhere.’ As a heart specialist, I am aware of the power of prevention and the remarkable advances we’ve made in the treatment and care of heart disease and stroke,” Mensah said. “I am always saddened to admit that many ethnic minorities, persons with low income, those with less than a high school education, women and millions of Americans without health insurances do not get the quality health care we are capable of giving.”
In 2004 the Rand Corporation surveyed cardiologists and found that 33 percent agreed differences in cardiac care are based solely on race or ethnicity. Only 12 percent, however, thought disparities existed in their own hospitals. More, only 5 percent allowed for the idea that their own patients were treated differently on the basis of race or ethnicity.
“The most striking finding was the really big disconnect between what physicians report about the system in general and what they report in their own hospital and in the patients they treat,” lead investigator for the Rand study, professor of policy analysis at the Rand Corporation, Nicole Lurie, M.D., M.S. P. H., noted. “It’s great to have solid national and statewide data, but one of the most important ways to increase awareness of disparities is to help health plans, doctors and nurses look in their own backyards and understand what goes on in their hospitals and practices.”
