Equal care for all: Fighting on many fronts

Medical organizations work to end health care disparities.

Editorial. Sept. 20, 2004.

Health care disparities returned to the medical headlines recently with the publication of a study concluding that physicians who treat black patients are more likely to struggle to provide high-quality care than those who treat white patients.

Physicians surveyed for the study, which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, said they face greater difficulty getting access to high-quality subspecialists, diagnostic imaging and hospital admission for their black patients.

This news is not particularly surprising. After all, it comes on the heels of a series of studies on the topic. Two of the most noteworthy were released by the federal government: the 2002 Institute of Medicine Report, "Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities," and the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's 2003 "National Healthcare Quality Report" and "National Healthcare Disparities Report."

The NEJM study nevertheless serves to remind us that health care disparities are entrenched in our system and will not be easy to eradicate. But the AMA and several other leaders of organized medicine are not about to let the difficulty factor discourage them. They know that the situation is undermining quality of care in this country as well as threatening the trust at the foundation of the physician-patient relationship. And they are determined to solve the problem. Indeed, AMA President John C. Nelson, MD, MPH, has signaled that health care disparities are to be a top focus of his term.