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Blacks are more likely to get overlooked for health care programs than white patients, and this could be because of a widely used by flawed software program that puts money over need.
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A new research study led by Dr. Ziad Obermeyer of the University of California, Berkeley, and published in the Science journal, found that the software program directed millions of high-cost patients, who are disproportionately white, into health care risk management programs even if they were healthier, than Blacks who were reportedly not as healthy and in greater need for the programs, according to The Associated Press.
This flaw is due to the software predicting costs rather than need, according to Dr. Obermeyer. Fixing it could result in a huge hike in the number of Black patients who will become eligible to participate in these programs.
“The problem was the algorithm was built to predict who’s going to cost money next year, not who’s going to need health care,” Obermeyer, who studies machine learning in medicine, told The Associated Press.
The study looked at patient data from a large hospital system and found that Blacks cost $1,800 less per year than whites who had the same number of chronic illnesses. That pattern has been duplicated at other hospitals across the country.
The software developer, a company called Optum, called the study’s findings “misleading” and said it was ever intended to be the sole determinant for health care decisions.
“The cost model is just one of many data elements intended to be used to select patients for clinical engagement programs, including, most importantly, the doctor’s expertise and knowledge of his or her patient’s individual needs,” Optum spokesman Tyler Mason told the Associated Press.
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In recent years, health insurers have attempted to identify patients with chronic medical conditions to sign them up for health care management programs designed to help them maintain a certain level of consistency and care. This reduces emergency room visits and hospital stays and ultimately brings down huge health care costs.
But as this study indicates, big data is not immune from bias and inherent flaws as well and could end up resulting in racial disparities in health care delivery and services the same as poverty, doctors’ unconscious beliefs and Black people’s distrust of hospitals and the health care system.
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