Posted on 06/02/2021 8:08:39 AM PDT by Enlightened1
Harvard Medical School instructors Bram Wispelwey and Michelle Morse argue in a Boston Review article that race should be used as a determining factor in how heart failure patients are treated.
They write that the necessary "proactively antiracist agenda for medicine" should be direct, and the solution they propose could reach patients exactly at the point of care: "a preferential admission option for Black and Latinx heart failure patients to our specialty cardiology service."
The physicians say that “medical restitution” should be part of an overall push to make society more equitable. “Anti Racist [sic] institutional change is essential to supplement federal reparations," they write.
Both Wispelwey and and Morse work with Brigham and Women's Hospital, a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital.
Noting that a disproportionate number of COVID-19 patients admitted to the hospital were people of color, the physicians wrote that “our effort to understand and correct this disparity has led us to rethink the nature of the fight for racial justice in medicine.”
The pair then analyzed ten years’ worth of hospital data, which revealed that white patients were indeed “more likely to be admitted to the cardiology service” at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and that Black and Latino patients with the same cardiac issues were disproportionately likely to end up in the general medicine department rather than the cardiology one.
The professors' plan seeks to influence healthcare professionals' decision-making. Their system, they write, "will include a flag in our electronic medical record and admissions system suggesting that providers admit Black and Latinx heart failure patients to cardiology, rather than rely on provider discretion or patient self-advocacy to determine whether they should go to cardiology or general medicine."
The professors pass over more common elements of anti-racist efforts, including "implicit bias training, diversity and inclusion efforts, and the adoption of supposedly objective checklist-style clinical criteria for decision making," claiming those tools do not go far enough to fix the problem.
“Our path to this realization, as with nearly all advancements in social medicine, took us outside our discipline — through the field of critical race theory (CRT), in particular,” they continued, arguing that “colorblind law” effectively “reduces the effectiveness of traditional civil rights laws, while rendering discriminatory actions more oppressive than ever.”
The hospital's media relations manager Mark Murphy referred Campus Reform to a statement clarifying that the professors’ position does not represent the hospital’s official policies. The statement denies that the hospital will offer race-based preferential treatment.
Though the statement acknowledged that “health inequity today continues to be a patient safety and public health issue,” it clarified that Brigham and Women’s Hospital will not offer preferential care based on race.
Campus Reform reached out to Wispelwey and Morse for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.
Follow this author on Twitter: @BenZeisloft
Racist much?
so racists and DS—government will decide who
lives and dies, they say.
....and separate drinking fountains.
the look for the most obscure stats and then make sweeping and stupid deductions...
>>preferential admission
systemic bias and discrimination
To the “back of the bus” we go
Once upon a time, well-meaning people said, “I don’t like these separate drinking fountains — even if I get the better one.”
Today, all the “do-gooders” say “I insist on separate everything, and make sure that the white people get the bad stuff.”
History will not look kindly on this.
The physicians’ plan would be how much money can we gouge from the feds bonus round race card.
How about preferentially helping black people and Latin Americans to change the habits that result in their higher incidence of heart failure?
To end racism, we must practice racism.
Today, all the “do-gooders” say “I insist on separate everything, and make sure that the white people get the bad stuff.”
Then, the white guys/gals patients get to pay for everyone’s free, better medicine and better personal care..
“push to make society more equitable”
That’s just honky talk.
How many doctors will be fighting to get paid $15/hour?
The biggest and best hospitals are in the big cities overflowing with ‘people of color’.
Let’s allow new hospitals in suburban areas for racial justice in health care.
So, they make up for a possible past inequity by creating a future inequity.
The opposite of crazy is still crazy.
PING!
“ Today, all the “do-gooders” say “I insist on separate everything, and make sure that the white people get the bad stuff.”
Then white males who are never hardest hit will just use their privilege to build and create a new market so they can provide those services, which of course will be even more unfair to minorities and make them even more hardest hit
The American universities really do need to be shut down. They are promoting everything that is bad about humanity. They are fascists and are promoting fascism.
I would be impressed if the white physicians included themselves and their families in the denial of care. Otherwise, just more virtue signaling.
Perfect! When they then need care for bullet wounds, will they be at the back of the line?
Generally speaking, physicians don’t have much trouble accessing quick medical care for their own ailments; perhaps they should also apply this concept to themselves, even when they decide to treat themselves. Think it’ll happen? Think NBA coaches like popovich and kerr, who love to spotlight racism will ever step aside for a black coach?
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