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Health-Care Problems Hitting Minorities Hardest, Conference Speakers Say

June 22, 2007 — Cultural sensitivity and growing disparities in the health-care industry on a global scale were among the topics discussed by health-care leaders from across the nation at the 14th Annual CEO/Senior Executives Invitational Conference on Friday.
The four-day event, held at Frenchman’s Reef and Morning Star Marriot Beach Resort on St. Thomas, brought together senior members of the National Association of Health Services Executives, of which Rodney Miller, president and CEO of the Schneider Regional Medical Center, is a member.
The infant mortality rate among African-Americans is double that of whites, said Patricia Pearman, global manager of culture and diversity for General Electric (GE) Healthcare. Based on the National Healthcare Disparities Report released in 2005, Pearman — one of the keynote speakers — shared by-now-familiar data about the alarming minority-mortality rates across the U.S.
Breast cancer “is the second leading cause of death amongst African-American women,” in the U.S., Pearman said. Furthermore, she said, African-Americans and Hispanics have a 20-percent greater risk of dying from heart disease.
One of the reasons for high mortality rates among minorities is the lack of access to health care, she said, although the problems are not unique to the U.S. "We know this is a global issue that we have to address," she said.
As an initiative to bridge health-care disparities in the U.S. by teaching minority youths about the importance of health care, GE Healthcare assists with several community organizations, Pearman said. One of them, Camp Heartland, serves children born with AIDS. In Ghana, GE Healthcare has provided medical equipment and generators to several hospitals that at one point would have had to turn away patients because they were over capacity, she said.
While most hospital leaders believe quality care has gotten better, most doctors believe the contrary, said Ian Morrison Ph.D., another keynote speaker. Increasingly costs and quality are becoming inversed, he said. In states such as New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and North Dakota, where there is a high-quality health-care system, costs are lower, he said.
As health-care costs increase, the financial burden ends up in the hands of the consumers, Morrison said. He compared the American health-care system to the MTV show “Pimp My Ride,” where a popular rapper and his crew transform an old vehicle into a flashy moving music sound station.
“American health care places unbelievable amounts of high technology into a frame that is fired by an old, ineffective engine,” he said. Its system “rewards procedures, and not keeping people healthy.”
The theme of the conference was “The Future is Now: Effective Leadership in a Global Healthcare Environment.” Pearman also discussed cultural sensitivity on a global scale. “Eighty percent of the global talent pipelines today are non-white and women,” Pearman said. Moreover, in the next 10 years, 85 percent of the labor pipeline will be persons of color, immigrants, women and physically challenged people.
“As leaders, it is our responsibility to step up to help our organizations and help them be more culturally diverse,” she said. “It is our responsibility to learn how to bridge that cultural gap."
Delegate Donna Christiansen will speak Saturday on strides taken locally in the health-care market and the importance of integrating the global market and management into improving health care.
Sharing their research on cultural diversity and health disparities in the health-care industry will be Christopher R. Mosley, president and CEO of Chesapeake General Hospital and NAHSE National President; George E. Curry, former editor in chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association; and Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
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