Healthcare Disparities

Klouvi Yawovi

Week6 article review

Executive Summary

This article entitled; Racial and ethnic disparities in health care, updated 2010, written by American College of Physicians, presents the reality of the racial and ethnic disparities in health care and made some recommendations to reduce this gaps. Although improvements have been seen in health care quality and some disparities have been reduced or eliminated, differences persist in health care quality among members of various racial and ethnic minority groups.

Irrefutable evidence indicates that racial and ethnic minorities are subject to quality care less healthy than white Americans, even when factors such as insurance status are controlled. Since the population continues to grow and diversify the health care system must change and adapt to meet the needs of a patient more and more multicultural. In 2003, the American College of Physicians, which is now the greatest medical specialty society in the United States with physicians and medical student members, published racial and ethnic disparities paper Healthcare (www. acponline.org / ppvl / policies / e000904.pdf). The document provides some recommendations on how the gap between patients’s racial and ethnic minorities and their white counterparts can be reduced. Unfortunately, even though progress has been achieved in some areas the question of the racial and ethnic disparities remains a difficult and complex problem to tackle. This update of the 2003 document adopts recommendations that still need attention - like improving access to health insurance among minorities - and also notes that progress has been made. Sources of racial and ethnic disparities are rooted not only in the nation's dysfunctional health care system, but also in a number of company-determinants that are discussed in this paper. Environment of an individual, income, education level and other factors all affect the health or reflect the health of a person. If racial and ethnic...