CONTEXT: Substantial racial disparities exist in the delivery of some health care services. Whether racial disparities exist in the duration of office visits to psychiatrists is not known. OBJECTIVE: To compare the duration of visits to office-based psychiatrists by white and African American @entity1 . DESIGN, SETTING, AND @entity1 : Analysis of a nationally representative sample of visits to office-based psychiatrists between 2001 and 2006. Visits were grouped by @entity1 race as non-Hispanic African American (n = 504) or non-Hispanic white (n = 7094). Main Outcome Measure Duration of face-to-face contact between @entity1 and psychiatrist. RESULTS: Unadjusted mean duration of @entity146 outpatient visits by African Americans (mean duration, 28.3 minutes) were 4.4 minutes shorter than visits by whites (32.7 minutes) (P = .02), although the difference narrowed (3.5 minutes; P = .07) following adjustment for potentially confounding @entity1 , psychiatrist, and practice characteristics. A gap was evident in 2001-2003 (7.4 minutes; P <.001) but negligible in 2004-2006 (0.1 minute; P = .94). In stratified regressions that combined time periods and controlled for several relevant characteristics, significant racial differences in visit duration were observed among visits with the following characteristics: @entity2166 diagnosis (10.0 minutes; P <.001), female @entity1 sex (5.4 minutes; P = .008), @entity308 diagnosis (5.2 minutes; P = .04), solo practice (5.2 minutes; P = .04), psychotherapy provision (5.1 minutes; P = .01), practices with high @entity1 volume (5.0 minutes; P = .03), Medicare payment (3.5 minutes; P = .02), and absence of @entity146 comorbidity (3.3 minutes; P = .04). CONCLUSIONS: In recent years, progress has been made in closing a racial gap in the length of @entity146 office-based outpatient visits by African American vs white @entity1 . Against a backdrop of persisting racial disparities in other areas of mental health care, ongoing attention to reducing disparities will be necessary to sustain and extend these gains.

Racial differences in visit duration of outpatient XXXX visits.

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['patients', 'patient', 'PARTICIPANTS'] @entity308 :: ('MESH:D003866', 'Disease') :: ['depressive disorder'] @entity2166 :: ('MESH:D000275', 'Disease') :: ['adjustment disorder'] @entity146 :: ('MESH:D001523', 'Disease') :: ['psychiatric']
@entity146 :: (MESH:D001523,Disease) :: ['psychiatric']
