Category Archives: Healthcare

Race and Health Care: Dimensions of Inequity by Niko Karvounis

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Yesterday I talked a little about segregation of patients by race in NYC hospitals, and noted how this is likely a problem repeated across the nation. Wonder no more: a 2006 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) analyzed about 719,000 Californians who had received a wide range of complex surgeries. The authors found that blacks, Latinos, and Asians were far less likely to get these operations done at high-volume hospitals, which tend to have better outcomes for complex surgeries. (After all, practice makes perfect).

If you’re white, you’re more likely to receive care at high-volume, better-performing hospitals. This is bad in and of itself; but unfortunately, discrimination continues beyond the level of medical institutions and into the level of individual doctors. A 2004 study in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at the primary care experience of Medicare patients, specifically looking at 150, 391 visits by black and white Medicare beneficiaries for “medical evaluation and management who were seen by 4355 primary care physicians.” Here is what they found:

“Most black patients were confined to a small group of physicians (80 percent of visits were accounted for by 22 percent of physicians) who provided only a small percentage of care to white patients. In a comparison of visits by white patients and black patients, we found that the physicians whom the black patients visited were less likely to be board certified (77.4 percent) than were the physicians visited by the white patients (86.1 percent) and also more likely to report that they were unable to provide high-quality care to all their patients (27.8 percent vs.19.3 percent).

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Race and Health Coverage: Medical Apartheid?

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I’ve invited Niko Karvounis, a colleague at The Century Foundation, to guest-blog. Niko is currently a Program Assistant at the Foundation and an Alumnus Senior Fellow with the Roosevelt Institution. His post follows below.

….

Recently I was handed a report from Bronx Health Reach (BHR) entitled “Separate and Unequal: Medical Apartheid in New York City” that reveals some startling inequities right here in the so-called capital of the world.

Bronx Health Reach is a coalition formed by the Institute for Urban Family Health, with the mission of examining and addressing racial and ethnic health disparities in the southwest Bronx portion of NYC.

At the local level in the Big Apple, these disparities play out through discriminatory care tied to health coverage. Since “health insurance is a major determinant of access to medical care,” poor insurance increases the probability of “delayed care and poorer health outcomes.” And in NYC, health insurance status is closely linked to race: “52 percent of blacks, 63 percent of Latinos” and only “24 percent of whites are uninsured or publicly insured.”  This skewed distribution of health coverage ultimately “creates a de facto sorting of patients by race.”

The most compelling evidence of apartheid can be found in the records of medical institutions which reveal the characteristics of patients that they admit and discharge.

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More Thoughts On the Hospital Building Boom

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A Startling Insider’s Look at What Happens to Patients Who Stay in the Luxury Suites of a Prestigious Hospital 
             
         

Last week, thehealthcareblog.com (THCB) asked if they could put up my post about the hospital building boom below where I ask “Can we Afford the Waterfalls”– and all of  the other hotel-like amenities that new hospitals are beginning to offer. Do we really need grand pianos, valet parking and all-private rooms—especially in hospitals that don’t yet have electronic medical records? (See my original post here)
         

Quite a few readers at THCB commented, with a number voting “yes” for the
amenities.  But one young doctor said “no”—and then offered this startling insider’s  view of  the care patients do and don’t receive on the luxury floor of one prestigious hospital:

“Maggie’s right-on regarding the disconnect between hospital frills and quality of care…

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Are We Willing to Accept a Two-Tier Hospital System?

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Yesterday, I wrote about the hospital-building boom and suggested that we may not need it—and more to the point, we may not be able to afford it.

In my description of how hospitals are adding costly amenities like waterfalls and all-private-rooms in order to woo well-heeled, well-insured patients, I suggested that the money might be better invested in computerized medical records or Level I trauma units. (In some parts of the country, trauma units are spaced so far apart that if you are in a car accident, there is a real danger that the unit will be too far away to be of any help.)

Barry Carol responded, agreeing that safety should come first, but also arguing that the private rooms help prevent infections. As for the waterfalls, he noted that “while they may make good journalistic copy as illustrative of frills,” given the high cost of hospital construction “they probably get lost in the rounding as a cost factor.” See his comment here.

Because Barry had raised a number of good points, and because the hospital boom is such a large and crucial subject, I decided to return to it today while responding to his comment.

Barry—

I’m afraid the waterfalls are more than good copy for journalists.. Similar amenities are being included in hospital construction across the country–and it adds up.

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The Hospital Building Boom: Can We Afford the Waterfalls?

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In Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much I talk about the nationwide hospital building boom—and ask two questions: Can we afford it? Do we need it?

In many regions, suburban hospitals have been reaching for big-city business. “What we have to do to maintain our position in the markets is to keep adding services,” explained Westchester Medical Center CEO Ed Stolzenberg. “That’s the whole reason we went into liver transplants.”

Did the resident of Westchester Country (just outside of New York City) need a local hospital doing liver transplants? Just how many transplants would a Westchester hospital do? Would such patients be better off at a high-volume medical center in Manhattan where “practice makes perfect”?

Those questions didn’t seem to come up.  The CEO knew that transplants would raise the hospital’s image.

Across the nation, as not-for-profit hospitals set out to invest in new construction and equipment, decisions seemed to be market-driven—but  not necessarily driven by the local population’s medical needs.  Instead, they were powered by the hospital’s need for market-share.

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Preventing Hospital Errors by Howard C. Berkowitz

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I have asked Howard Berkowitz to guest-blog on hospital errors.

Howard is in an unique position to write on this topic because he consults on
medical information systems for hospitals and also has been a long-time
patient. Over the years, he has taken an unusually detailed decision-making role
in his own care for heart diseases and diabetes which, he says, “has kept me
going, with bad heart genetics, at least 17 years more than my father.”

Howard also reports that “when no one else would coordinate my mother’s complex
cancer care, I did so…and I know what it is to preserve the semblance of
life, when only pain remains. Complex pain management is also one of my
interests; too few doctors know that pain should always be controllable.”

As a result of his own health problems and his parents’ illnesses, he has spent
more time in hospitals than anyone would ever want to endure. But unlike
most of us, he understood what was going on. Originally trained in microbiology
and biochemistry, Howard was doing independent research in antibiotic
resistance and working in a clinical laboratory while in high school. He
confesses that, for his 10th birthday, he asked his mother for a copy of the
Merck Index of Chemicals and Drugs. Subsequently, he built the first clinical
computer system for Georgetown University Hospital,
developed virological systems for Electronucleonics’ “hot lab” and developed
cardiac care simulators and for the George Washington University School of Medicine,
Office of Computer-Assisted Instruction. He also developed the first automated blood
bank laboratory tools for the Red Cross.


Full disclosure—he has two patents in process for hospital communications and staff management dedicated to keeping them informed, in real time, of patient needs.
His post follows below.

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Preventing Hospital Errors Part II by Howard C. Berkowitz

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Given the medical community’s reluctance to step up and admit to mistakes, Medicare has decided to get tough, saying that it will stop reimbursing  hospitals for the thirteen adverse advents listed below. Before discussing the list, let me suggest that not all of these events are within a hospital’s control. I’ve rated the mishaps on the list from 1 to 4, with “1” indicating something that, I agree, should never happen, and “4” referring to something that, in my experience, a hospital may not be able to prevent.

    The 13 Things That Should Never Happen in a Hospital
   1. Catheter-associated urinary tract infection [2]
   2. Bed sores [1]
   3. Objects left in [THE PATIENT”S BODY] after surgery [1]
   4. Air embolism, or bubbles, in bloodstream from injection [1]
   5. Patients given incompatible blood type [1]
   6. Bloodstream Staphylococcus (staph) infection [2]
   7. Ventilator-associated pneumonia [2]
   8. Vascular-catheter-associated infection [2]
   9. Clostridium difficile-associated disease (gastrointestinal infections) [3]
  10. Drug-resistant staph infection [3]
  11. Surgical site infections [3]
  12. Wrong surgery [1]
  13. Falls [4]

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Quote of the Week: Do You Agree or Disagree?

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From a review of The
Truth About Health Care, by David Mechanic. The review is written by Rob Cunningham and appears in Health Affairs,
September/October 2007.

“At some point
we as a nation will have to decide whether we wish to design our health care
system primarily to satisfy those who profit form it or to protect the health
and welfare of all Americans.” Mechanic speculates that “anything is possible if the public begins to appreciate how little it gets for what
it really pays.” But even as reform begins to rise again on the political
agenda, the preponderance of the evidence in this book says that a
majority of American prefer pluralism and individual liberty to the
tedious business of working together . . .”

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Comment on Class and Health

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(To see the original post on Class and health, click here.  To add your comment, scroll down and click on “Contact” on the left-hand side of the page.)

From Alan Abrams (a.k.a. Alan_A
at the hpscleansing.com/group
community forums)

I just read Maggie
Mahar’s health blog after linking to it from an agonist.org blog on universal health care.
I then read Maggie Mahar’s blog [post] on
"Class and Health."  thus this quote:

"And yet, and yet . . . Schroeder sees reason for "cautious
optimism." Although we trail behind other countries, we are healthier than
we once were. We have reduced smoking ratse, homicide rates and motor-vehicle
accidents. Vaccines and cardiovascular drugs have improved medical care. But
progress in other areas will require "political action,"
Schroeder declares, "starting with relentless measurement of and focus on actual
health status and the actions that could improve it. Inaction
means acceptance of America’s poor
health status."

Healthier than we once were? Really?  Are…smoking, homicide rates, and
motor-vehicle accidents adequate measures of the overall improving general
health of Americans?

What about these:

  • 58 Million Overweight; 40 Million Obese; 3 Million morbidly Obese
  • Eight out of 10 over 25’s Overweight
  • 78% of American’s not meeting basic activity level recommendations
  • 25% completely Sedentary
  • 76% increase in Type II diabetes in adults 30-40 yrs old since 1990

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Class and Health

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When compared to other developed countries, the U.S. ranks near the bottom on most standard measures of health. Many people assume that this is because the U.S. is more ethnically heterogeneous than the nations at the top of the rankings, such as Japan, Switzerland, and Iceland. But while it is true that within the U.S. there are enormous disparities by race and ethnic group, even when comparisons are limited to white Americans our performance is “dismal” observes Dr. Steven Schroeder in a lecture  published in the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday.

Why? It’s not the lack of universal access to healthcare" says Schroeder, though that’s important. And it’s not just that we don’t exercise enough and eat too much—though that is a major cause. But there is one factor undermining the nation’s health that we just don’t like to talk about in polite society: Class. When it comes to health, class matters.

Schroeder, who is the Distinguished Professor of Health and Health Care at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) underlines how poorly even white Americans stack up when compared to the citizens of other countries by pointing to maternal mortality as one measure of health. When you look at “all races” you find that in the U.S. 9.9 out of 100,000 women die during childbirth.  Focus solely on white women, and the number is still high—7.2 deaths out of 100,000 –especially when compared to Switzerland where only 1.4 women out of 100,000 die while giving birth.

Statistics on infant mortality reveal the same pattern: among “all races” 6.8 American children who were born alive die during infancy; limit the analysis to “whites only” and 5.7 infants die—compared to just 2.7 out of 1,000 in Iceland. .) When researchers compare maternal mortality and infant mortality in white America to rates of death in the 29 other OECD countries, white America ranks close to the bottom third in both categories.

Turn to life expectancy, and you find that white women in the U.S. can expect to live 80.5 years, only slightly longer than American women of all races (who average 80.1 years). Both groups lag far behind Japanese women (who, on average, clock 85.3 years). The gap between “all American men” (who live an average of 74.8  years) and white men in the U.S. (75.3 years) is wider—but not as wide as the gap between white men in the U.S. and men in Iceland (who live an average of 79.7 years).

“How can this be?” asks Schroeder. After all, as everyone knows, the U.S. spends far more on health care than any other nation in the world.

The answer is a stunner: the path “to better health does not generally depend on better health care,” says Schroeder. “Health is influenced by factors in five domains — genetics, social circumstances, environmental exposures, behavioral patterns, and health care. When it comes to reducing early deaths, medical care has a relatively minor role. Even if the entire U.S. population had access to excellent medical care — which it does not — only a small fraction of premature  deaths could be prevented.” [my emphasis]

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