Adam Johnson – Black and Hispanic People Have Longer Hospital Wait Times in America Than Whites

short study [3] released Monday by JAMA Internal Medicine found that minorities wait, on average, 25% longer to obtain medical care than do whites. The period waiting for care, or  “clinic time” for White americans was about 80 minutes. For African-Americans it was 99, and for hispanics it was 105.

The reasons for this disparity and varied and not entirely clear. Face-to-face time with doctors is roughly even across race lines so the disparity may be caused be a number of factors, many of them institutional in nature. According to The Post:

The data suggest that minorities are spending more time interacting with the medical system in other ways: by waiting, or by engaging with the administrative parts of medicine.

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