In The News This Week … August 14–20, 2004: Care and Color

Researchers analyzed 150,391 visits by 43,032 black and white Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years or older, who visited 4,355 primary care physicians for medical evaluation and management. The data was obtained from the biannual 2000–2001 Community Tracking Study Physician Survey, which uses a national sample of physicians, and those in 60 randomly selected metropolitan statistical areas.

Their study, published in the August 5, 2004 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine and entitled Primary Care Physicians Who Treat Blacks and Whites, found that the doctors the black patients visited were less likely to be board certified (77.4%) than were the doctors visited by white patients (86.1%). Moreover, the doctors who treated black patients were also more likely (27.8% versus 19.3%) to report that they were unable to provide high quality care to all of their patients and that they faced greater difficulties in obtaining access for their patients to subspecialists of high quality, high-quality diagnostic imaging, non-emergency hospital admissions, and high-quality ancillary services.

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