“Across the nation, studies show that Black patients are two to three times less likely than white patients to be seen at private academic medical centers, which have a reputation for providing superior care. Uninsured patients are five times less likely than patients with private insurance to be seen at these types of hospitals.
Working at NYU Tisch, the private hospital that was part of the university, we knew that when EMS picked up unhoused patients in an ambulance, they would never bring those patients to the private hospital. They only brought them to Bellevue, the public hospital affiliated with the medical school. This was the unspoken rule. We all knew that interns weren’t allowed to work at Tisch ER because that would mean a wealthy private patient might complain of inadequate care. Instead, if you were an intern, you went to work at the Bellevue ER, where the assumption was that people would be grateful for your help, no matter how inexperienced you were.
In my 10 years working at Tisch and Bellevue, I can count on one hand the number of times anyone broke the silence about the existing segregated system of healthcare. When someone did, it was usually a Black person or person of color.
‘How come the FDNY guys are so rude to the patients they bring to the ER at Bellevue’ one of my residents, an Indo-Caribbean woman, asked one night. ‘They would never speak that way to a Tisch patient!’ She was right. The paramedics would routinely shout at the public hospital patients and treat them roughly, while remaining courteous with the private patients in their care.”
See “At the private hospital, the disrespect was just more subtle: a tale of America’s two healthcare systems” (January 23, 2024)
