Body Watch : Link Found Between Race, Doctors

Nonwhite physicians are considerably more likely than white physicians to care for minority, indigent and sicker patients and may be economically penalized for doing so, a recent study by two physicians at the University of Maryland School of Medicine has concluded.

Drs. Ernest Moy and Barbara A. Bartman analyzed data from the 1987 National Medical Expenditures Survey, a federally funded study of 15,000 Americans designed to provide national estimates of health-care use and expenditures.

They found that 14.4% of adults identified a nonwhite physician as their usual source of medical care. More than one-third of black, Latino, Asian or other minority patients received care from a nonwhite physician, while 11% of white patients did. Indigent patients were about twice as likely as affluent patients to seek treatment from nonwhite physicians.

Adults who identified their doctor as a nonwhite physician were more likely to be sicker; they had more chronic and acute illnesses, were more likely to be hospitalized and had more psychological symptoms than patients of white doctors.

While the study--which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.--does not pinpoint the reasons for the racial disparities, the authors suggest several: that nonwhite doctors might be more willing to practice in poor and medically underserved areas; that white patients might not be willing to go to nonwhite physicians, and that nonwhite patients might avoid white physicians.

“Do nonwhite and white physicians practice in different, racially segregated communities?” they ask, urging that different patient populations be distributed more equitably to “make medical apartheid in America obsolete.”