Medscape January 20, 2022
Howard Wolinsky

Physicians, take note: An analysis of more than 40,000 electronic medical records has found troubling signs of racial bias in the notes.

The study, by a team at the University of Chicago, found that physicians appear to be much more likely to use negative words to describe their Black patients in the electronic health record (EHR) and may communicate racism through the use of words and descriptions with negative connotations.

“Compared with White patients, Black patients had 2.54 times the odds of having at least one negative descriptor in the history and physical notes,” Michael Sun, a third-year medical student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and lead author of the study, told Medscape Medical News. “Our...

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