Bias against Black patients found in eletrconic health records - Axios
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Tina Reed, author of Vitals
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Black patients were more than two-and-a-half times as likely as white patients to have negative descriptors about them in their electronic health record, according to a study published Wednesday in Health Affairs.
Why it matters: The study is further evidence of bias in the U.S. health care system, which can ultimately result in worse care and disparately poor outcomes.
Details: University of Chicago researchers used machine learning to analyze more than 40,000 notes in the EHRs of more than 18,000 patients at an urban academic medical center.
- The study looked for sentences that included negative descriptors such as "resistant," "challenging" or "noncompliant."
- Even when controlling for individuals' sociodemographic and health characteristics, Black patients were 2.54 times as likely to have a negative descriptor than white patients.
What they're saying: "Negative descriptors written in the admission history and physical [notes] may be likely to be copied into subsequent notes, recommunicating and amplifying potential biases," the authors wrote.
- "This practice underscores the responsibility of providers who document the initial patient encounter to do so in an aware and sensitive manner," they wrote.
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If I read this correctly , blacks are having negative descriptors attached to their initial interviews with medical personnel. If accurate, this is disturbing.
Like most of the unattributed stuff you post, it's probably not accurate
What do you mean unattributed? Double check your own comments for pete sake.
Maybe the description is correct and they are more "resistant," "challenging" or "noncompliant."
Why is this evidence of racial bias in the healthcare system? It’s not as if medical staff in this country are exclusively white (much less white supremacist or whatever).
Maybe the negative descriptors are in the record because these people were genuinely being a pain in the ass. That seems like it would be on them, not the system.
Black people are 2 1/2 times a bigger pain in the ass than whites?
According to University of Chicago researchers, possibly so.
The record is the record. Why is it valid to just assume that the people making the record are racist?
I would never assume that a person behaves a certain way (white or black) based on their skin color, but culture is another matter. I have been hearing all through the pandemic that some black people don’t trust doctors and hospitals . I don’t think anyone assumes that that is because of skin color (i.e. black people don’t trust doctors because dark skin makes them not trust people or something). It’s more likely cultural based on knowledge of past injustice done to earlier generations, to cite one type of example.
So if you’re a black person whose social circles focus on that kind of thing, you might walk into a doctor’s office or hospital with a chip on your shoulder.
That’s just one possibility. It’s not the only reason someone might be "resistant," "challenging" or "noncompliant." But whatever a patient’s reason, they’re still the one being a pain in the ass. Most medical personnel are probably just trying to do their job.
Or medical personnel subconsciously think blacks are more un-cooperative patients based on stereotypes.
Why? What stereotype? Why go to the trouble of making a notation if nothing is happening? How does that benefit the medical personnel at all?
Notice that the descriptors are used to describe all patients; not just Black patients. That's what 2.54 times more likely means; white patients were found to have those descriptors in their records - and - Black patients were 2.54 times more likely to have those descriptors in their records.
So, are we to believe that those descriptors in the records of white patients are accurate - but - the same descriptors in records of Black patients are racist?
And naturally, any believer in the racial equity cult will equate the difference to racism, just like every other difference in outcome between groups.
It does make life very simple when one need only cite racism to explain everything.
Not only that, but it also means that no one is ever responsible for the bad things in their lives. It’s always someone else’s fault.