Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care

Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care
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Discriminative service offering has been noted in some health centers in the US. In an effort by the US government to offer its citizens quality health services and to work towards curbing unequal access to health care, based on discriminative provision of the services by the health care professionals, the congress prompted for a study to establish the extent of this discriminative medical procedures and service delivery systems, Institute of Medicine (2003). This study was aimed at establishing the main contributors to such discriminative situation in the health sector, and formulating the necessary policy instruments to guide the medical practitioners towards the reduction or full elimination of the inequality and biasness in service delivery in the health sector.
The study established that there was unequal access to medical services based on the race and ethnicity of the person seeking for medical attention regardless of personal income, age or disease severity, (Smedley, Stith & Nelson, 2003). Further according to the research findings, minority groups were susceptible to poor health services from the heath professionals and even would not access the routine medical attention from the heath care centre. The study put forward its recommendation geared toward reducing the ethnic and rational discrimination of patients. This was to be done through public education on the existence of discrimination and health care practitioners. Further, creation of awareness to the policy makers related to health issues and companies offering health insurance on the discriminative aspects of their policies.
The main causes of this discrimination was based on biasness in provision of health care, stereotyping of health practitioners and prejudice among the health professionals. However, a majority of the practitioners outlook to these practices as ethical and argue that they are in coherence with the moral standards in the health care provision, (Board on Health Sciences Policy, 2002). According to the study, the most contributing factors are the overloading of work, which may deter personal decision-making as well as critical thinking in an effort to provide quality health care to the patients. These accelerate the likelihood of health practitioners to indulge in prejudice practices.
The failure or trouble in diagnosing the patients’ condition due to mixed symptoms may also be a cause to poor medical attention to the patient by the medical practitioner. Other issues such as patient condition if uncertain e.g. social economic capability of the patient and gender may lead to alleviating the disparities in the medical attention given. The insurance status of the individual may also be a contributing factor in this discrimination, (Institute of Medicine, 2003). The reason behind this is that minority groups’ individuals are subject to cheap insurance with strict list to the policy coverage on medical attention. However, there too exists discrimination even when patients have the same insurance cover. Due to such discrimination practices by the health practitioners in hospitals, there is a reduced trust by minorities on the ability of doctor and other health providers to provide quality health care to patients. Hence, it is the responsibility of the health practitioners to ensure that discrimination in health care does not occur and ensuring quality health services are accorded to all patients. In an effort to improve the condition and bring trust for health practitioners to the minority, there is need to put the right structures in place to curb discrimination. This includes, quality health plan for public health centers. This should be geared towards achieving the same level of benefits to all patients, (Smedley, Stith & Nelson, 2003). Further, the...