Discrimination part of Indiana medical system, panel says

Intentional and unintentional discrimination are dominating Indiana’s health care system, which is causing Indiana residents to be deprived of proper health care benefits, said Dr. Virginia Caine, director of Marion County Health Department. Caine was a member of the panel during the Neal-Marshall SPEA Public Policy Lecture series discussion called “Is health care colorblind?” on Tuesday in the Indiana Memorial Union. The panel featured IU professors and health care professionals from Marion and Monroe counties.\nCaine said the causes of discrimination in the health care system come from society’s history with discrimination, and she believes that there is a lack of five important elements in the health care system today. She called them the “five A’s”: Accessibility, availability, appropriateness, acceptability and affordability.\nCEO of Methodist and IU Hospitals Samuel Odle said, “When economics is the biggest issue in your life, you’re not worried about preventative health.”\nOdle said that economic problems for minorities stem from other people’s ignorance and lack of education or understanding of the differences between different ethnic groups.\nSchool of Public and Environmental Affairs professor Nicole Quon moderated the panel discussion.\n“We still have economic disparity, there are people living in pretty poor conditions,” she said. “When you’re having a day-to-day struggle to even survive, I don’t think you get to thinking about your long-term health.”\nThe panel members agreed that increasing accessibility of health care benefits and educating people of health care options are the solutions to decreasing discrimination in the system.\nEdwin Marshall, professor of optometry and adjunct professor of public health at the IU School of Medicine, gave an example of discrimination in health care about when his mother recently moved across the country and had to change doctors. \nHe said that his mother was concerned because her new doctor did not run tests on her illnesses as extensively as her former doctor. When she asked why, her new doctor replied that he only ran tests that Medicare would cover. \nMarshall said that the doctor assumed that his mother could not pay for further testing based on her race alone.\n“I think that communication is altered,” he said. “Our beliefs of trust and distrust appear in how we can react with the health care environment.”\nMary Shaw-Perry, co-director of Center for Minority Health Research, said that there are many physicians that decline patients because of bad financial situations, those patients turn to hospital emergency rooms.\n“The ER cannot be the safety net, it’s not working,” she said. “The bottom line in America is that everything is money-driven.”