Los Angeles Times - February 15, 2010

Many studies have documented the fact that patients of color are less likely to receive the same quality of medical care as whites, and that those differences often translate to worse health outcomes. The pattern holds up even after taking into account demographic factors such as income, education and health insurance status.

To figure out why this is, a group of researchers from Yale University’s School of Public Health and the Urban Institute focused on 133,821 patients who were treated for one of 10 surgical procedures at hospitals in New York City or the adjacent counties of Westchester (to the north) and Nassau (to the east) between 2001 and 2004.

The researchers picked New York City because of its diversity of ethnic groups and abundance of hospitals. They picked the 10 procedures – for breast cancer, colorectal cancer, gastric cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, coronary artery bypass graft, angioplasty, abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, carotid endarterectomy and total hip replacement – because prior studies have shown that surgeons and hospitals who perform them more often produce better outcomes.