Doctors face disparities in care of Blacks

• Doctors who treat black patients are less likely to be board-certified than those who treated white patients.

• Researchers said previous studies showed that doctors who aren't board-certified are less likely to follow screening recommendations -- a tendency that could mean delayed diagnosis.

Primary care physicians who treat many black patients were less likely to be board-certified and more likely to struggle to provide high-quality care than physicians who treat white patients, a new study shows. Researchers said their findings show two unequal health systems. Physicians who treat black patients face greater difficulty getting access for their patients to high-quality subspecialists, diagnostic imaging and hospital admission. "The doctors don't seem to be able to provide the same quality of care," said Peter Bach, MD, lead author of the study in the Aug. 5 New England Journal of Medicine. "There are differences in terms of resources and ease of scheduling, and all of those things affect the quality of care for patients." Researchers analyzed 150,391 visits by black and white Medicare patients to 4,355 primary care physicians who participated in a 2000-01 telephone survey. The study was conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change in Washington, D.C., and New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where Dr. Bach is a pulmonologist and epidemiologist. The study found that 22% of doctors accounted for 80% of the black patient visits in the study while the remaining 78% of physicians received the majority of visits by white patients. Thus, black and white patients are largely treated by different physicians, the study said.  [more ]