Diversifying medicine: The time is now

The medical profession should view health care disparities as a health care quality issue.

Editorial. Nov. 17, 2003.

The Sullivan Commission on Diversity in the Healthcare Workforce hit Chicago last month on the fourth stop of its seven-city tour.

The 15-member commission, convened by former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan, MD, is holding hearings across the country as it sets about developing some comprehensive, tangible recommendations for addressing the widening gap between the diversity of the health care profession and the diversity of the population it serves.

Hispanics make up nearly 12.5% of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but according to the American Medical Association, only 3.4% of physicians are Hispanic. Blacks make up 2.5% of the physician work force, but they are 12.3% of the general population.

There has been no shortage of recent studies bringing to light the existence of racial and ethnic disparities in health care in this country. Most notable is the 2002 Institute of Medicine report, which found that minorities were likely to receive lower-quality health care regardless of income and insurance coverage.

Eliminating health care disparities needs to be viewed by the medical profession as a quality issue, as well as an ethical one. AMA President-elect John C. Nelson, MD, MPH, put it this way when he testified before the Sullivan Commission: Physicians have a professional and moral obligation to deliver the best possible quality care to everyone.

It is commonly accepted that training more minority physicians would go a long way toward eliminating disparities. As recently as last month, an AMA-convened task force that included representatives from state and medical specialty societies, the National Medical Assn., the National Hispanic Medical Assn. and the federal government agreed that now is the time to increase work-force diversity.