Menu
The Goodman Institute Health Blog
  • Home
  • Authors
    • Devon Herrick, Ph.D.
    • John C. Goodman
  • Popular Topics
    • Affordable Care Act
    • Consumer-Driven Health Care
      • Cost of Healthcare
      • COVID-19 and Public Health
      • Doctors & Hospitals
      • Public Insurance
      • Policy & Legislation
    • Direct Primary Care
    • Drug Prices & Regulations
    • Health Economics & Costs
    • Health Insurance
    • Health Reform
    • Medical Tourism
    • Medicare
    • Single-Payer/Medicare-for-All
    • Telemedicine
  • Goodman Institute
  • Contact
The Goodman Institute Health Blog

JAMA: Tool Used to Ration Scarce Hospital Beds During Covid was Racially Biased

Posted on July 9, 2022July 9, 2022 by Devon Herrick

Racial bias in medicine takes many forms. It occurs when an older black guy sees his doctor, who doesn’t bother to prescribe drugs for hypertension because he assumes his patient will be noncompliant. Maybe it’s when a doctor doesn’t try to counsel her patient with high cholesterol because she assumes Hispanics suffer from with high cholesterol due to deeply entrench lifestyle behaviors. There are even debates that some treatment algorithms used in hospitals are biased due to biased programming.

Here’s another example: an article in IEEE Spectrum claimed pulse oximeters are racially biased. IEEE Spectrum was reporting on a study that appeared on May 31, 2022 in JAMA Internal Medicine, finding pulse oximeters display inaccurate readings on black, Asian and Hispanic patients. The inaccuracies caused care givers to assume black and Hispanic patients’ arterial oxygen saturation level was higher than it actually was. This could (and likely did) lead to delays in care for patients of color.

Pulse oximeters are available over the counter for a little as $11 on Amazon. They are used frequently as a tool to check the disease progression in severe Covid-19 patients. They were undoubtedly used as a screening (rationing) tool to decide who got scarce hospital beds during the peak Covid outbreaks. Someone registering a lower oxygen saturation rate would get priority over someone with a higher rate, even if the higher reading was inaccurate.

Here is the part I find amazing. The way pulse oximeters work is by shining a light on the skin of the fingertip or ear. Would it not make sense that skin pigmentation could affect the results of a test using light on a fingertip? Then I looked back farther and discovered this was written about in the New England Journal of Medicine in December of 2020. Then using Google Scholar, I discovered dozens of studies discussing inaccuracies based on skin pigmentation going back decades. I am especially amazed that it apparently took decades for this news to reach hospital emergency departments.

Join the conversation. Cancel reply

For many years, our health care blog was the only free enterprise health policy blog on the internet. Then, when the NCPA closed its doors, the health blog stopped as well.

During this five-year hiatus no one else has come forward to claim the space. So, my colleagues and I have decided to restart the blog in connection with the Goodman Institute. We invite you and others to use this forum to share your views.

John C. Goodman,

Visit www.goodmaninstitute.org

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9 other subscribers

Popular Topics

©2023 The Goodman Institute Health Blog | Website by Lexicom