He then took the videos on CD-ROM to various medical meetings. More than 700 doctors took part in what was described as a government study on clinical decision-making. At the end of the examination, the doctors were asked which patients needed further advanced treatment. It involves squirting dye into cardiac arteries, then X-raying them to find blockages and determine the best treatment. Doctors also perceived black patients to be poorer than the white patients.
Researchers say it's bias.
We think it's not something physicians are actively doing. It's just an effect of how they automatically characterize people who come into their office or to their emergency room. Schulman's study will be officially released in today's New England Journal of Medicine . But already it's served as a wake-up call for many physicians. The experiment was so well done that most say doctors can no longer ignore the subconscious bias many harbor.