A new article from Tyler Loftus, M.D., Crystal Johnson-Mann, M.D., and Azra Bihorac, M.D., suggests methods to tilt the balance toward fairness and equity in surgical care.
Current efforts to overcome implicit bias and health care disparities by focusing on building awareness and enacting structural changes to entities like credentialing agencies and training curricula have yielded modest progress. Thus, it comes as no surprise that additional strategies are needed.
Implicit bias is a significant threat to surgical care. Surgery referral patterns and individual surgeon judgement are inherently affected by implicit bias, resulting in disparities. Similarly, surgical decision-support tools propagate these disparities when source data and model input features reflect these biases.
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