Identifying provider prejudice in healthcare
By: Amitabh Chandra, Douglas O. Staiger
Contributors: Staiger, Douglas; National Bureau of Economic Research
Series: NBER working paper series -- working paper 16382; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) -- working paper no. 16382.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] /
Description: "The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this.  You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email.  We use simple economic insights to develop a framework for distinguishing between prejudice and statistical discrimination using observational data.  We focus our inquiry on the enormous literature in healthcare where treatment disparities by race and gender are not explained by access, preferences, or severity.  But treatment disparities, by themselves, cannot distinguish between two competing views of provider behavior.  Physicians may consciously or unconsciously withhold treatment from minority groups despite similar benefits (prejudice) or because race and gender are associated with lower benefit from treatment (statistical discrimination).  We demonstrate that these two views can only be distinguished using data on patient outcomes: for patients with the same propensity to be treated, prejudice implies a higher return from treatment for treated minorities, while statistical discrimination implies that returns are equalized.  Using data on heart attack treatments, we do not find empirical support for prejudice-based explanations.  Despite receiving less treatment, women and blacks receive slightly lower benefits from treatment, perhaps due to higher stroke risk, delays in seeking care, and providers over-treating minorities due to equity and liability concerns"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 12/16/2010.

Includes bibliographical references.

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