Adventist Health Agency will Train Professionals in Ethnographic Approaches to Health Disparities for the State of Maryland
by AT News Team
The Center on Health Disparities in Takoma Park has been awarded a contract by the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission to train hospital employees across the state in methods of collecting better data about patients' ethnic backgrounds, according to the Gazette suburban newspapers published by Post-Newsweek Media. The improved information will help public health officials, health care institutions and health professionals address disparities in health care and health outcomes among various communities.
The first of the one-day seminars is scheduled for June 28 at the Maryland Hospital Association offices in Elkridge, a suburb of Baltimore. Sessions will also be held in the mountains of western Maryland and on the Eastern Shore. Each seminar will include a panel discussion by hospital patients who will talk about their experiences as well as their reactions to being asked about their ethnic background, language preferences, etc.
Hospitals have long collected demographic data about patients and have used it to help explain trends in disease and health-promotion factors, but "the accuracy of the data is questionable," said Marcos Pesquera, executive director of the center. Questions about race, ethnicity and language can be offensive to patients, leading to apprehension among care-givers. As health care relies more on electronic medical records, collecting accurate information becomes more important.
An example of the importance of ethnographic information in health care was provided by the center. A comparison of two recent years found that infant mortality among African Americans was 2.7 percent higher than among whites. Among Hispanic and Latino residents those without health insurance were more than five times the proportion among non-Hispanic whites.
The center is an agency of Adventist HealthCare, the organization affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Maryland and New Jersey that operates four hospitals and a number of home health and nursing care institutions. Perhaps best known of the institutions is Washington Adventist Hospital which shares a campus with Washington Adventist University one mile from the District of Columbia.
The training sessions are being conducted in partnership with the Maryland Hospital Association and the Institute for Family- and Patient-Centered Care. Maryland is noted among hospital administrators as having the most highly regulated health care system in the United States.
What will this prove? If certain ethnic groups are receiving more care or less care what will it prove? That there is discrimination, the favorite ploy of activists.
Maranatha
Mr/Mrs/Ms TS suggests that "discrimination [is] the favorite ploy of activists." I thought that all men and women of good will (and we would hope that would include all Christians) would want to work to avoid discrimination against groups on the basis of their gender, religion, ethnicity, maritial state, country of origin, or sexual orientation. not just "activists." Or perhaps Mr./Mrs/Ms TS believes in discriminating against certain groups.
Erv's point begs the question unanswered by the news item: "Is there discrimination?" Truth Seeker's question misses the answer implicit in the story: "The debate is over. Discrimination has already been proven by statistical disparities. Only xenophobic, racist deniers who don't care about children would question the self-evident conclusion that there is systemic, widespread discrimination in medical care delivery."
What is important now is not to scientifically ascertain the reliability of the data, or to analyze the potentially complex causes of those statistical findings. We simply need to move toward translating those statistical disparities into legislative and regulatory mandates that will both allocate medical revenues, and create a permanent bureaucracy. to suck resources away from direct medical care toward distributional equality. The assumption is that inequality of result bespeaks procedural and substantive injustice.
It's always the same when Justice and Equality, the inseparable protean potentates of progressivism, are invoked: "The debate is over; questioners are denialists and obstructionists. The great Oz has spoken. Watch the smoke; listen to the noise; feel the power. Pay no attention to what is behind the curtain.
And if a prospective patient declines to give his ethnicity? I once was taking a college course as an adult and left blank the question about ethnicity. The lady at the desk was apparently not pleased and put something down.
I don't plan to participate in any such dog show; my ethnicity is *my* busimess and no one else's period!
What a waste of money to serve the interests of the purveyors of political correctness.
The early SDA church's advice to ignore the color line, has long been relegated to history. However, it is obvious that the poor of any race will not get the same availability of health care as others. Look at those stuck in mountain shacks away from medical care; or urban areas that don't even have a grocery store in the neighborhood, let alone a doctor. Yet drugs and booze are all around. It's a systemic problem that needs attention, and money put into more studies takes funds from the solution. It's like setting up a study to see if the earth is round!
We are all responsible in one way or another for change, and that includes the poor themselves as well as the wealthy. It doesn't take a study to realize we need an army of educators and medical workers (and businesses) that aren't greedy to motivate people. Will that ever happen? I don't think so–maybe on a small scale.
Churches need to bring the good news and information to hurting people. And I am not talking about the beasts of Revelation!
Actually Ella, I think we need to be careful about blaming greed for all the ills in society. Why are we always so quick to let envy off the hook, when it is envy that is enjoined by the 10th Commandment.
Greed can actually drive down the cost of health care in a competitive environment where the government doesn't cater to the favored greedy, and protect them through regulations that purport to protect the general public, while driving up the costs of goods and services. Is it greed or charity that motivates my grocer to provide fine produce for me at the lowest possible price? Of course you know I could go on forever pointing out how self-interest and the desire to improve one's own economic condition is responsible for prosperity.
You correctly observe that we aren't going to get an army of non-greedy education and medical workers – or non-greedy consumers for that matter. So the solutions appear to lie more in the realm of mitigating the negative consequences of greed by policies that encourage personal responsibility and hard work, and by laws that remove barriers to competitiveness in the medical care industry.
Is it selfishishness or altruism that leads me to exercise regularly, eat healthfully, work productively, and seek appropriate medical care? I can't cite them to you off the top of my head, but I have seen studies demonstrating that, in countries with fully nationalized medical care, the poor still have worse health outcomes. One reason of course is that medical care is a relatively small part of the total health care picture. Another reason is that, like wealthier folks, the poor are also greedy. Their greed tends them in the direction of seeing things short term rather than long term. They may choose to ignore health issues that are vital, but not urgent, in favor of immediate emotional priorities which always seem to crowd out long term thinking. You can shower society with condoms, sex education, and drug education. But some people are still going to reject the resources you make available to them. And they will engage in behaviors that perpetuate their situtation. The primary reasons for unequal access, IMO, have more to do with values and priorities than with external barriers and funding.
Accusing someone else of being greedy is a convenient way to dismiss our own envy.