TUESDAY, June 28, 2005 (HealthDay News) -- A patient's race or ethnicity has little impact on the quality of care he or she receives at the doctor's office, a new study finds.
That doesn't mean the present level of outpatient care is perfect, however.
"We observed similar, though less-than-optimal, outpatient care across all racial and ethnic groups using visit-based, physician-provided nation data," study lead author Dr. Jun Ma, research associate at the Stanford University Prevention Research Center, said in a prepared statement.
The findings appear in the June 27 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
For this study, the researchers analyzed outpatient data from 1992 and 2002 and broke that data down by race and ethnicity. They used 23 quality measures to check for racial and ethnic disparities.
"When we set out to do the study, we expected to see these disparities. But our result was contrary to our hypothesis," Ma said.
Even though the study results indicated no racial or ethnic gaps in care, Ma said that doesn't mean they don't exist.
"A lack of statistical significance does not automatically mean there is a lack of clinical or political significance. It is a very complex issue," Ma said.
She also noted that the study has no information about initial access to health care and this may be an important factor in the findings.
"We speculate that racial and ethnic disparities may arise more from unequal healthcare access and utilization than from direct differences in treatment once a patient is in the system," Ma said.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about racial and ethnic health disparities.
