Testing for the Role of Prejudice in Emergency Departments Using Bounceback Rates

Shamena Anwar and Hanming Fang

No 16888, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We propose and empirically implement a test for the presence of racial prejudice among emergency department (ED) physicians based on the bounceback rates of the patients who were discharged after receiving diagnostic tests during their initial ED visits. A bounceback is defined as a return to the ED within 72 hours of being initially discharged. Based on a plausible model of physician behavior, we show that differential bounceback rates across patients of different racial groups who are discharged after receiving diagnostic tests from their ED visits are informative of the racial prejudice of the physicians. Applying the test to administrative data of ED visits from California and New Jersey, we do not find evidence of prejudice against black and Hispanic patients. Our finding suggests that, at least in the emergency department setting, taste based discrimination does not play an important role in the racial disparities in health care.

JEL-codes: I11 J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-03
Note: EH LE LS PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published as Anwar Shamena & Fang Hanming, 2012. "Testing for the Role of Prejudice in Emergency Departments Using Bounceback Rates," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(3), pages 1-49, December.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16888.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Testing for the Role of Prejudice in Emergency Departments Using Bounceback Rates (2012)
Working Paper: Testing for the Role of Prejudice in Emergency Departments Using Bounceback Rates (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16888

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16888

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().