RHI Health Blog of the Week

The RHI Health Blog of the Week is awarded to an exceptional health-related post appearing during the previous week (Wednesday to Tuesday).

This week's award goes to: Jason Shafrin's "Doctors, Patients, and the Racial Mortality Gap" at Healthcare Economist. Jason discusses a recent paper that looks into the racial mortality gap for chronic heart failure (CHF), one of the leading causes of death for the elderly and one of the major components of the racial mortality gap. The paper finds that, while doctor quality and socioeconomic factors account for 5% and 20%, respectively, of the CHF mortality gap, the vast majority of the mortality differences are due to the fact that blacks are less likely to take their medication than whites. From the paper:

I show that doctor quality significantly influences patient outcomes. While minority patients visit slightly less competent doctors, this does not explain the large gap in survival. Individual doctors are found to treat their patients similarly regardless of race. On the patient side, I demonstrate that variation in compliance triggers a racial mortality gap. Differences in patient response to treatment significantly alter survival probabilities. Considerable reductions in medical costs could be achieved by convincing patients of the importance of strictly following the therapy regimen. I estimate that targeting compliance patterns could reduce the black-white mortality gap by at least two-thirds.

The award is presented every Wednesday. If you would like to nominate someone for the RHI Health Blog of the Week, please contact me.

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