IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/34168.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Clinician Behavior When Skin-Tone Affects Test Results

Author

Listed:
  • Marcella Alsan
  • Liran Einav
  • Amy Finkelstein
  • Jonathan Zhang

Abstract

We compare care for Black versus white patients following pulse oximetry, a widely-used device for measuring blood oxygen levels which over-estimates oxygen saturation in darker-skinned patients. Black patients are therefore medically more appropriate for follow-up care than white patients with the same pulse oximetry reading. Yet, using data from the Veterans Health Administration on 3.5 million emergency department visits between 2014 and 2018, we find that Black patients systematically receive lower rates of follow-up care than white patients with the same reading. Our findings illustrate how bias in a medical screening device is propagated and amplified in downstream care.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcella Alsan & Liran Einav & Amy Finkelstein & Jonathan Zhang, 2025. "Clinician Behavior When Skin-Tone Affects Test Results," NBER Working Papers 34168, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34168
    Note: AG CH EH LE LS PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w34168.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34168. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.