“because a vast majority of programs that tie payment to cost and quality goals aren’t focused on disadvantaged populations, they create incentives for hospitals to avoid patients from these groups. For example, in the 1990s, the New York State Department of Health began grading surgeons who performed coronary bypass surgery and making their report cards available to the general public. The aim was to make outcomes more transparent and to help surgeons improve. But to this day, the initiative makes it harder for Black patients to get surgery. Why? Because statistically, outcomes are generally worse for Black patients because of … Read More
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“Just as the Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted racial inequities in law enforcement, so the lopsided toll of Black victims in the pandemic has revealed them in health care. Hospital policing is where these two disparities collide. Cleveland’s prestigious hospitals, which mainly employ and treat whites, are surrounded by low-income Black neighborhoods with some of the worst health outcomes in Ohio, including lower life expectancy and high rates of asthma, diabetes and infant mortality. Hospitals have replaced the factories and plants of a faded industrial era as the most important economic engine in northeast Ohio. The clinic [Cleveland Clinic] … Read More