Brawley said doctors who treat black patients “tend to be in worse medical situations” than doctors who treat white patients.
“You have to say ‘tend to’ — it’s not totally black and white, there’s a lot of gray there,” he said. “But if you’re a black person, you are more likely to be taken care of by a doctor that doesn’t do as many prostate operations and in a hospital that doesn’t do as many prostate surgeries as a middle-class or white person.”
Brawley said this isn’t racism on the part of any doctor, per se, “but a form of racism that’s ingrained in our society.”
Even though Medicare patients have equal access to care, poor black people tend to go to hospitals that are not as good as the ones whites go to, and black men tend to see doctors that don’t specialize in prostate cancer, Brawley said.
“Part of this is a lack of medical sophistication,” he suggested. Patients need to be educated about their options and look for the highest quality care available, he said.
“The more patients are involved in their care, and the more questions they ask, the more they seek quality care, not just the care offered to them,” Brawley said.
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