DO RACIAL AND ETHNIC MINORITIES RECEIVE A LOWER QUALITY

News accounts of the state of healthcare delivery seem to be full of bad news, including concerns about rising healthcare costs, patient safety and medical errors, and the growing numbers of uninsured Americans. To add to these problems, many recent news reports indicate that racial and ethnic minorities receive lower quality healthcare than whites, even when they are insured to the same degree and when other healthcare access-related factors, such as the ability to pay for care, are the same. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare, added to the media fray when the IOM con-cluded that “(al)though myriad sources contribute to these disparities, some evidence suggests that bias, prejudice, and stereotyping on the part of healthcare providers may contribute to differences in care.” This finding was alarming to many healthcare professionals, the vast majority of whom work hard under very challenging conditions to ensure that patients receive the best possible healthcare to meet their needs. How could bias, prejudice, and stereo-typing contribute to unequal treatment, particularly given that healthcare providers are sworn to beneficence and cannot, by law, discriminate against any patient on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, or national origin? This brief summary of the IOM Un-equal Treatment report addresses this question, and summarizes other relevant find-ings to help healthcare professionals meet the objective of providing high-quality care for all patients