By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The American Medical Association, the largest physicians' group in the United States, apologized to black doctors on Thursday for a history of racial discrimination.The AMA, in a statement, said the group will work to increase the ranks of minority physicians and their participation in the AMA. The apology arose from the work of an independent panel of experts that studied the history of what it called "the racial divide in organized medicine." "The AMA is committed to improving its relationship with minority physicians and to increasing the ranks of minority physicians so that the workforce accurately represents the diversity of America's patients," Dr. Ronald Davis, the immediate past president of AMA, said in a statement.
Details of the AMA panel's work will be released next week on the Web site of the AMA's Institute for Ethics to coincide with publication in a scientific journal.Dr. Nelson Adams, president of the National Medical Association which represents black physicians in the United States, said the NMA was founded in 1895 because of the AMA's discrimination."Black doctors couldn't be members of the American Medical Association," Adams said in a telephone interview."AMA looked the other way when local medical associations worked to exclude most black physicians from becoming members. Back then and even as recently as the early '70s, in order to get hospital privileges, lots of times you had to be a member of the county medical society," Adams said.
"If you couldn't get on the county medical society, you couldn't get hospital privileges," he said.
Besides hurting black doctors, Adams said that hurt health care for blacks.
"In the vast majority of the leading causes of death, black folk are still at the top of the heap," he said.
He said blacks in the United States have a 25 percent higher rate for all cancers; a 30 percent higher rate of heart disease, a 40 percent higher rate of stroke and a 50 percent higher rate of diabetes.
Several studies have shown that even when blacks have the same income, insurance and education as whites, they do not fair as well when it comes to getting medical care.
"When AMA doesn't get on board with these things, it impacts all of us. It certainly impacts the black community disproportionately," he said.Adams said the AMA's apology will allow the groups to join forces to help address some of these problems.He is particularly keen on increasing numbers of black physicians, who make up only 3 percent to 4 percent of all doctors in the United States. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, blacks account for 13 percent of the U.S. population.
"There are fewer African American physicians per capita to date than there were in 1910," Adams said.
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